


The Age of Paradox- Book Two: The World of Paradox

by Marcus_S_Lazarus



Series: The Age of Paradox [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Colony in Space follow-up, Doctor Who Unbound, Episode: s01e08 Father's Day, F/M, Faction Paradox (Doctor Who), Jenny has a new name, Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, Serial: s078 Genesis of the Daleks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 52
Words: 151,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23649223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marcus_S_Lazarus/pseuds/Marcus_S_Lazarus
Summary: With Amy's training completed, the Doctor and Amy embark on a new journey through time and space, learning more about the world that the Faction has created as they confront old friends... as well as some unexpected allies...
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor/Amy Pond
Series: The Age of Paradox [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1702561
Kudos: 7





	1. Starship UK

As she stared out of the TARDIS doors at the vast spaceship below them, it wasn't hard for Amy to understand why the Doctor had chosen this as their first destination after she'd changed from her uniform into a new red-and-white checked shirt and jeans, preferring something comfortable over stylish for her first trip; the TARDIS was the most incredible vehicle she had ever seen, but the idea that she was currently looking down at something built by the humans of the future felt more… _personal_ to her.

"Incredible…" she said, as she stared out of the TARDIS doors at the vast city-ship below her, buildings covered in the names of various cities she recognised from long experience of studying maps. "And that's really got the whole of England's population on it?"

"The vast majority of them from the twenty-ninth century, yes," the Doctor said, nodding at her. "Solar flares roasted Earth, and the entire human race packed its bags and moved out until the weather improved, after a select group of elite were sent to this old space station for additional security; complicated way of doing things, but they wanted to cover all the bases."

"And we're looking at… Starship England?" Amy asked, looking thoughtfully down at the ship.

"Well, it's officially identified as Starship UK even after Scotland requested its own ship, but that's not the issue right now," the Doctor said, waving a dismissive hand as he grinned while adjusting the console settings with the other. "What's important is that the ship's continuing its migration through the stars, searching for a new home for the human race; is that incredible, or is that incredible?"

"It's incredible," Amy said, nodding in agreement at the Doctor. "So… shall we go down?"

"Already there," the Doctor said, smiling as he stepped away from the console and turned to look at Amy. "Just remember, only observe and enjoy unless you see _clear_ evidence that there's something wrong…"

"Understood," Amy said, nodding at him in agreement.

The Doctor might regard it as his duty to get involved and help out where he could, but with the Faction to consider as an issue, he couldn't afford to just dive in wherever and whenever he felt like it. As he had explained to Amy, these days in particular he had to be selective and confirm that whatever was happening was something that the locals couldn't hope to handle on their own and could be dangerous if left alone for too long; the less clues he gave them as to his presence, the better.

Stepping out of the TARDIS, Amy immediately found herself in the middle of a bustling market, the immediate hall resembling an oversized shopping centre with a large glass window and other small stalls in the middle; an area immediately behind where the TARDIS had materialised actually looked more like the corner of a road rather than something you'd find inside a building. There was even a mailbox a short distance away, lights strung up with a colour that suggested Christmas even if the general atmosphere didn't add to that impression, and a wide collection of people in clothing that looked slightly mis-matched to Amy, as though the owners had just donned whatever they could find.

"Right then," the Doctor said, looking thoughtfully at the vast bustle of people around them. "First question, Pond; what's wrong with this picture?"

"Is it… the bicycles?" Amy asked, her gaze fixing on the riders in question as they went by. "Not exactly normal for a spaceship…"

"Normally, yes, but you have to keep in mind that we're dealing with a society that had to abandon several of its original creature comforts after an environmental upheaval beyond precedent…" the Doctor said, his voice trailing off as he looked around the area for a moment before walking over to a nearby table in what looked for all the world like an outdoor café and picking up a glass of water. Ignoring the drinker's request for an explanation, the Doctor placed the glass on the floor, stared at it for a moment, and then put the glass back on the table.

"Sorry; checking all the water in this area," he said briefly, before he turned back to Amy and led her away from the table. "Where was I?"

"Why did you do that with the water?" Amy asked.

"Don't know; I think a lot; it's hard to keep track, and I'm suddenly reminded of the time Green-8 and I were looking at that palace…" the Doctor said, before he shook his head and turned around. "Now then, look at that."

Following his gaze, Amy soon saw what he was looking at; a little girl, sitting on a bench, dressed in a red cardigan over a red-and-white checked shirt, her brown hair pulled back in a pony-tail.

Following his gaze, Amy soon saw what he was looking at; a little girl, sitting on a bench, dressed in a red cardigan over a red-and-white checked shirt, her brown hair pulled back in a pony-tail. Shooting a brief glance at Amy to stay where she was, the Doctor walked over to sit down beside the girl, looking anxiously at her in an open, prompting manner that was clearly intended to encourage her to talk to him, only to be met with nothing. After tentatively reaching out towards the girl, only for her to pull away, the Doctor gave up and walked back over to sit beside Amy.

"One little girl crying," Amy said, looking thoughtfully at the Doctor as he stared at the girl with an equally contemplative expression. "So?"

"Crying silently," the Doctor pointed out. "I mean, children cry because they want attention, because they're hurt or afraid. But when they cry silently, it's because they just can't stop. Any parent knows that."

Amy decided not to ask how the Doctor came by that knowledge; he'd casually mentioned his granddaughter once, but even if he hadn't discussed his other family members in greater detail, Amy had heard enough in that moment to know that asking for more information about the family he'd lost when Gallifrey was destroyed wouldn't be a good move.

"Hundreds of parents walking past who spot her and not one of them's asking her what's wrong, which means they already know, and it's something they don't talk about," the Doctor continued to explain, as the girl looked anxiously around while bringing herself under control before getting up. "Secrets. They're not helping her, so it's something they're afraid of. Shadows, whatever they're afraid of, it's nowhere to be seen, which means it's everywhere. Police state."

"Where'd she go?" Amy asked, noticing that the girl had vanished while they were talking.

"Deck two oh seven. Apple Sesame block, dwelling 54A; you're looking for Mandy Tanner," the Doctor said, handing Amy a colourful wallet from inside his jacket. "Oh, er, this fell out of her pocket when I was trying to talk to her. Took me four goes. Ask her about those things. The smiling fellows in the booths. They're everywhere."

"But they're just… things?" Amy said, recalling some of the Doctor's first lessons to her; the seemingly innocuous details were the most important. "They're… too clean, aren't they?"

"Nice observation, Pond," the Doctor said, grinning in approval at her before his grim expression replaced the grin. "So, in a place where everything else is battered and filthy, why is nobody going within two feet of those booths?"

"So… while I'm talking with Mandy… what will you be doing?" Amy asked.

"What I always do," the Doctor replied, smiling at her reassuringly. "Back here in half an hour?"

Nodding in agreement, Amy turned around and hurried after the indicated little girl, hurrying along a couple of corners until she found a road name sign on the wall; incongruous, but maybe if she found a map…

"You're following me," the girl who was apparently Mandy Tanner said from behind Amy, a quick turn revealing that Mandy was standing between what looked like an oil drum and some kind of traffic cordoning object on the edge of another stone corridor. "Saw you watching me at the marketplace."

"You dropped this," Amy said, handing her the wallet.

"Yeah, when your friend kept bumping into me," Mandy replied, taking the wallet and walking off, leaving Amy to walk after her until the younger girl came to a halt.

"What's that?" Amy asked, noticing what looked like a striped workman's hut with yellow flashing lights and a keep out sign in front of them, under a sign saying 'Magpie Electricals'.

"There's a hole," Mandy replied. "We have to go back."

"A hole?" Amy repeated, looking at it in surprise.

If there was a hole on a spaceship, she was fairly sure blocking it up should be a priority- she might not be a scientist, but lack of oxygen in space wasn't hard to understand- so the lack of workmen around here suggested that there was something else going on…

"What are you doing?" Mandy asked, the question attracting Amy's attention back to the girl even as she moved forward to sit down and set to work at the lock in front of her with the skills taught to her by the Doctor.

"Oh, don't mind me; never could resist a keep-out sign," Amy said. "What's through there? What's so scary about a hole? Something under the road?"

"Nobody knows," Mandy said. "We're not supposed to talk about it."

"About what?" Amy asked, her attention still fixed on the padlock.

"Below," Mandy clarified.

"And because you're not supposed to, you don't?" Amy said, shaking her head at the thought as she opened the lock and stood up, smiling back at Mandy. "Well, coming?"

"No!" Mandy yelled, moving back.

"Suit yourself," Amy said, taking a moment to collect herself before she crawled into the tent, immediately seeing something in front of her that she couldn't quite make out in the dark. Picking up a nearby wind-up lantern- how far had society fallen after those solar flares?-, Amy gave it a couple of experimental turns, only to find herself facing what looked like some kind of massive scorpion's tail sticking up from the ground.

"OK…" she said after a moment. "Now _that's_ weird…"

As the tail lashed out at her, only just avoiding coming in direct contact, Amy immediately retreated backwards, only to find herself being hit in the face by something once she left the tent…

* * *

Following the tracking device given to him by the mysterious Liz Ten, the Doctor wondered why he was doing this; he still knew far too little about this whole situation to feel comfortable even taking action, and here he was, taking advise from someone wearing a mask that could have concealed the face of a Faction agent to try and find his companion…  
  
Then again, if any of his theories about this Starship UK were correct, he didn't have much choice but to follow the tracker; he didn't have any better ideas about how to find Amy right now, particularly when she clearly wasn't going to make it back to their scheduled rendezvous…  
  
"… _do whatever you have to do_ ," a familiar voice said over a recording as the Doctor approached a cubicle of some sort, " _just please, please get the Doctor off this ship_!"  
  
"Amy?" the Doctor said, opening the cubicle to see his companion watching a recording of herself on four strangely primitive-looking television sets, the Amy on the screen looking like she'd been crying while Amy herself just seemed to be confused.  
  
"What…?" Amy said, looking between the screen and the Doctor in confusion as the Doctor pulled out the sonic screwdriver to quickly examine the cubicle.  
  
"Yeah, your basic memory wipe job," he said, after examining the light at the top. "Must have erased about twenty minutes."  
  
"But why would I choose to forget something?" Amy asked.  
  
"Because everybody does," the little girl that he'd noticed earlier said; she must have followed him or Amy here for some reason. "Everybody chooses the Forget button."  
  
"Did you?" the Doctor asked, looking curiously at Mandy.  
  
"I'm not eligible to vote yet; I'm twelve," Mandy explained. "Any time after you're sixteen, you're allowed to the see the film and make your choice. And then once every five years."  
  
"And once every five years, everyone choose to forget what they've learned," the Doctor said  
  
"Democracy in action."  
  
"How do you not know about this?" Mandy asked, looking curiously at him.  
  
"It's the Time Lord thing, isn't it?" Amy said, looking at him with a brief smile. "It doesn't recognise you as human?"  
  
"You'd be surprised how much of a double-edged asset that can be," the Doctor said, smiling briefly at her as he studied the cubicle. "Once managed to get past an android that was meant to be guarding me because it didn't know what I was, but another time I had to trick a gene tester to let me into a prison to question someone about a unique form of radiation that was my only lead in a murder investigation…"  
  
He shook his head and turned his attention back to the matter in front of them. "Anyway, that's not important; what _is_ important is finding out how this ship can do anything without any engines."  
  
"It doesn't have engines?" Amy repeated.  
  
"It's why I put those glasses down like that; something this big should have engines generating some very strong vibrations, but I wasn't getting so much as a twitch," the Doctor explained, turning his attention back to the screen. "As Holmes once noted, it's what isn't there as much as what is there that's important sometimes; when I was with Green-8, it was food bubbling over without producing a smell, and this time it's a lack of engine vibrations…"  
  
"So, we've got a ship that can move when it shouldn't and something that people forget whenever they watch it; what's… what's our next move?" Amy asked, looking uncertainly at him.  
  
"What else?" the Doctor said, grinning as he reached out towards the other button before them, this one saying 'Protest' rather than 'Forget'. "We bring down the government."  
  
With that statement, he hit the 'Protest' button on the other side of the console, and the door slammed shut, trapping him and Amy inside as the floor opened up to reveal a long drop into a glowing red tunnel below them.  
  
"Say wheee!" the Doctor said, grinning as he and Amy were left with nowhere to go but down as the floor retracted away from beneath their feet. He had no time to give Amy anything more comforting to think about before they were sent hurtling downwards along an increasingly-narrowing chute until they reached the bottom, landing in what immediately appeared to be some kind of rubbish dump. After confirming that nothing was injured, the Doctor immediately setting to work scanning his surroundings before Amy crashed to the ground behind him.  
  
"High speed air cannon; lousy way to travel," the Doctor noted, even as he continued to scan their new location.  
  
"Where are we?" Amy asked, picking herself up and staring at her clothes in frustration.  
  
"Six hundred feet down, twenty miles laterally, puts us at the heart of the ship," the Doctor said briefly. "So, if we're inside a ship without engines, what's this then, a cave? Can't be a cave. Looks like a cave."  
  
"It's a stupid rubbish dump, Doctor; what else is there?" Amy asked, looking at him in frustration.  
  
"A rubbish dump that's only for organic food refuse, coming in from feeding tubes all over the ship…" the Doctor muttered, using the screwdriver to confirm his assessment of the cave's other contents before he turned his attention to the floor. "Coming into a room with a squidgy, wet, slimy floor…"  
  
His eyes widened. "Oh."  
  
"Oh?" Amy said, looking sharply at him. "What's 'oh'?"  
  
"The next word is kind of a scary word," the Doctor said, looking anxiously at his companion; it was encouraging to know that he still couldn't prepare people for everything they'd encounter even after all he'd seen in this universe, but that didn't make it more comforting. "You probably want to take a moment, get yourself in a calm place, go omm…"  
  
He waited a moment for Amy to follow his instructions, the Scottish redhead looking anxiously at him as she did so, and then he broke the silence. "It's a tongue."  
  
"A tongue?" Amy repeated.  
  
"A tongue," the Doctor confirmed, grinning encouragingly (When the alternative was to scream in fear, an encouraging grin was better even if it wasn't totally appropriate). "A great big tongue!"  
  
"This is a mouth?" Amy said, looking around herself as she stepped back from him. "This whole place is a mouth? We're in a mouth?"  
  
"Yes, yes, yes," the Doctor confirmed. "But on the plus side, roomy."  
  
"How do we get out?" Amy asked, clearly becoming increasingly panicked as she looked around. Under other circumstances, the Doctor might have speculated more about the size of the creature that owned this mouth, but considering that this was Amy's first official trip he didn't want to freak her out by thinking about that too much.  
  
"OK," he said, turning his attention to the end of the mouth with teeth, "it's being fed through surgically implanted feeder tubes, so the normal entrance is closed for business."  
  
"We could try, though," Amy .  
  
"No, stop, don't move," the Doctor said, reaching out anxiously as the 'floor' suddenly vibrated beneath their feet, accompanied by a grumble of some sort. "Too late; it's started."  
  
As soon as he finished the sentence, the floor shook and both of them fell over, Amy landing on her back as the Doctor rolled over so that he was lying on his front.  
  
"What has?" Amy asked.  
  
"Swallow reflex," the Doctor said, turning the screwdriver towards the tongue as he prayed that this would work; this wasn't exactly something you could plan for, after all…  
  
"What are you doing?" Amy asked.  
  
"I'm vibrating the chemo-receptors!" the Doctor clarified.  
  
"Hold on; doesn't that mean-?" Amy began, her eyes widening in horror as she finally managed to stand back up, only for her eyes to widen in horror at the sight of the wave hurtling towards them from the back of the throat.  
  
"Precisely!" the Doctor said, reaching up to adjust his bow tie after slipping the screwdriver back into his pocket; their natural transcendental nature should allow him to ride through this without losing anything…  
  
"Sorry about this; this isn't going to be big on dignity!" he called over to Amy, who was staring at the wave in horror, leaving him with nothing else to do but try and sound enthusiastic to take her mind off it. "Geronimo!"  
  
Then the wave hit him…


	2. Very Old, Very Kind, and the Very Last

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To reassure people, I am planning to diverge more from canon as time goes on; right now I'm just establishing the Doctor and Amy's new dynamic in this new timeline by exploring how canon has been altered in more subtle ways by looking at some of the more interesting episodes, and then I'll get on to some original storylines.

As Amy sat sharply up, she was amazed to find that she and the Doctor were now just standing in what looked like a long slightly circular corridor, a door at one end while the other end stretched back into darkness, a smaller circle in the ceiling above them that was presumably where they'd fallen from.

"There's nothing broken, no sign of concussion…" the Doctor said, looking back at her with a brief, apologetic smile as she stared down at her clothes, grateful that she hadn't worn that neat leather jacket now. "And yes, you are covered in sick; sorry about that."

"Where are we?" Amy asked, standing up as she tried not to think about what was on her clothes.

"Overspill pipe, at a guess," the Doctor replied as Amy tried not to think about the smell that was hitting her nostrils; she was terrified enough at how close she'd come to being _eaten_ …

"Can we get out?" she asked, looking anxiously at him.

"One door, one door switch, one condition; we forget everything we saw," the Doctor said, indicating the door with a distinctive 'Forget' button at the side, a panel hanging loose in a manner that suggested that the Doctor was trying to rewire it. "Look familiar?"

Before Amy could respond, the other end of the corridor lit up, revealing two booths with the same smiling figures sitting in them.

"That's the carrot," the Doctor said, turning around to look at the figures in the booths. "Oh, and here's the stick."

Evidently unconcerned by the things in the booths, the Doctor walked up towards the figures with a firm authority about his manner. "There's a creature living in the heart of this ship; what's it doing there?"

As Amy watched, the heads of the things from the booths turned around to reveal a sterner face that actually appeared to be frowning.

"No, that's not going to work on me, so come on," the Doctor said, naturally unimpressed by something that just stared at him. "Big old beast below decks, and everyone who protests gets shoved down its throat. That how it works?"

The robots' faces turned around again, this time revealing a face that was twisted into a red-eyed, tooth-baring snarl (And Amy was _not_ going to wonder where this third face came from…).

"Oh, stop it," the Doctor said indignantly. "I'm not leaving and I'm not forgetting, and what are you fellows going to do about it? Stick out your tongues, huh?"

With that statement, the creatures emerged from the booths, prompting Amy to back up behind the Doctor as he withdrew his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the creatures, starting a scan to determine the best way to shut them off…

He didn't have time to even begin the scan before a robed, dark-skinned woman who was clearly the enigmatic Liz Ten without her mask stepped out from behind him and Amy and shot both robots, before casually spinning her gun and slipping it back into its holster.

"Look who it is," he said, smiling briefly at her as he returned to his usual casual manner. "You look a lot better without your mask."

"You must be Amy," Liz Ten said, walking over to Amy with an outstretched hand. "Liz. Liz Ten."

"Hi," Amy said, clearly stuck for what else to say.

"Lovely hair; shame about the sick," Liz said, looking Amy over briefly before going back to the door, which Mandy had just walked through. "You know Mandy, yeah? She's very brave."

"How did you find us?" the Doctor asked.

"Stuck my gizmo on you; been listening in," Liz Ten replied, tossing him what was presumably the scanner. "Nice moves on the hurl escape. So, what's the big fella doing here?"

"You're over sixteen; you've voted," the Doctor said, putting the scanner in his pocket (He should have checked for a tracker, but he'd had other things on his mind) "Whatever this is, you've chosen to forget about it."

"No," Liz said. "Never forgot, never voted; not technically a British subject."

"Then who and what are you, and how do you know me?" the Doctor asked, his mind shifting to the possible options; she was unlikely to be a Faction agent, considering that she was actively helping him so far- the Faction would have tried to capture him to turn him in to the Grandfather by now, if they weren't interested in shoving him back into the creature's mouth- but there were a few options involving people just being misguided…

"You're a bit hard to miss, love," Liz replied with a slightly seductive smile. "Mysterious stranger, M.O. consistent with higher alien intelligence, hair of an idiot. I've been brought up on the stories. My whole family was."

"Your family?" the Doctor repeated, suddenly wondering if she was some descendant of Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart; he'd never considered himself prejudiced, but he just hadn't encountered many people of that skin colour prior to this point in history…

"They're repairing," Liz said, looking at the robots as they suddenly began to get up. "Doesn't take them long. Let's move."

As they hurried through the door, they found themselves in a more conventional corridor once more, leaving the Doctor with little choice but to let Liz Ten lead the way as she filled in the blanks.

"The Doctor," the mysterious woman said, recounting the details as though they were nothing. "Old drinking buddy of Henry Twelve. Tea and scones with Liz Two. Vicky was a bit on the fence about you, weren't she? Knighted and exiled you on the same day. And so much for the Virgin Queen, you bad, bad boy."

"Liz Ten…?" the Doctor said, inspiration striking him at last.

"Liz Ten, yeah; Elizabeth the Tenth," Liz said, just as the sound of something mechanical moving reached his ears. "And down!"

As she spun around, the Doctor and Amy ducked, bullets striking the robots that had been pursuing them and sending them to the floor.

"I'm the bloody Queen, mate," Liz said, grinning at the three of them as she raised her weapons. "Basically, I rule."

It wasn't a philosophy that the Doctor totally agreed with, but in this situation, he didn't exactly have a wide variety of options available but to hurry after her, the now-identified queen leading through a side door with a grating on one side that a loud banging was coming from.

"There's a high-speed Vator through there," Liz Ten said, noticing where the Doctor's attention was currently focused. "Oh, yeah. There's these things; any ideas?"

Looking at a nearby grating, the Doctor winced at the sight of strange things that reminded him of oversized scorpion tails attacking the grating, but somehow always striking the bars rather than penetrating the gaps…

"Doctor, I saw one of these up top," Amy said. "There was a hole in the road, like it had burst through like a root."

"Exactly like a root," the Doctor said, a quick scan confirming his guess. "It's all one creature, the same one we were inside, reaching out. It must be growing through the mechanisms of the entire ship."

"What, like an infestation?" Liz said, the Doctor only able to nod as he continued to study it, her tone becoming increasingly indignant at the thought. "Someone's helping it. Feeding it. Feeding my subjects to it. Come on. Got to keep moving."

As Liz and Mandy walked off, the Doctor could only stare at the tail-thing in silence for a moment before he hurried after them.

He still didn't _know_ what was going on, but he had a strong suspicion that the answer wasn't going to be one he liked when he found it…

* * *

Looking around what was apparently Liz Ten's state apartment, the Doctor wasn't sure if he approved or not. On the one hand, Liz's rooms were remarkably large for a place where accommodation would naturally be at a premium- he wondered if the ship had some kind of 'birth quota' to ensure that the population didn't grow beyond a certain rate- but on the other hand, they were reasonably empty apart from the large number of glasses on the floor, a large ornate bed, and a few other bits and pieces.  
  
"Why all the glasses?" he asked, looking curiously at the queen as she lay on the bed, her expression grim.  
  
"To remind me every single day that my government is up to something, and it's my duty to find out what," Liz replied solemnly.  
  
"A queen going undercover to investigate her own kingdom?" the Doctor asked, as he picked up the mask to study it more closely.  
  
"Secrets are being kept from me; I don't have a choice," Liz responded, leaning forward as she glared at him. "Ten years I've been at this. My entire reign. And you've achieved more in one afternoon."  
  
"How old were you when you came to the throne?" the Doctor asked.  
  
"Forty," Liz replied. "Why?"  
  
"Hold on; you're _fifty_?" Amy said, looking incredulously at the other woman.  
  
"They slowed my body clock," Liz replied. "Keeps me looking like the stamps."  
  
"And you always wear this in public?" the Doctor asked, sitting down on the bed beside her as he indicated the mask (It reminded him slightly of those masks worn by the clockwork robots he'd encountered when he met Reinette, but that wasn't relevant right now; they were different enough that it was just a coincidence).  
  
"Undercover's not easy when you're me," Liz said.  
  
"Air balanced porcelain," the Doctor noted as he turned his attention back to the mask. "Stays on by itself, because it's perfectly sculpted to your face…"  
  
"Yeah?" Liz said with a slight smile. "So what?"  
  
"Oh, Liz," the Doctor said, wishing that he could smile at the implications of what he was realising. "So everything…"  
  
He was almost grateful when a group of people in robes showed up at that point; the talk about the workings of Starship UK might raise questions, but he was starting to get a clearer idea of the answers…

* * *

As she followed the Doctor and Liz into the dimly-lit room, Amy tried not to think too much about where they were going; the Tower of London might be a cool place to visit, but in this context, she just found herself remembering that it was once a prison…  
  
"Where are we?" she said, looking anxiously over at the Doctor as a nearby pipe revealed more tail-things.  
  
"The lowest point of Starship UK," the Doctor said grimly as he studied their new location. "The dungeon."  
  
"Ma'am," an old man said, walking up to Liz Ten with one of those frustratingly neutral expressions people always assume when they aren't giving away anything useful.  
  
"Hawthorne," Liz replied. "So this is where you hid yourself away. I think you've got some explaining to do."  
  
"There's children down here," the Doctor said, indicating a group of children walking past them. "What's all that about?"  
  
"Protesters and citizens of limited value are fed to the beast," Hawthorne said (The Doctor hated the 'limited value' part of that statement, but at least it could be argued that it was for a valid reason here; in a confined environment like this, some people would just drain already-limited resources). "For some reason, it won't eat the children. You're the first adults it's spared. You're very lucky."  
  
"Yeah, look at us; torture chamber of the Tower of London," the Doctor said, glaring briefly at Hawthorne. "Lucky, lucky, lucky…"  
  
Walking over to the middle of the room, the Doctor looked down a large hole that revealed the top of what could be a pulsating brain, with giant electrodes pointing down at it and cables leading away from the electrodes to surrounding consoles. "Except it's not a torture chamber, is it? Well, except it is. Except it isn't. Depends on your angle."  
  
"What's that?" Liz said, indicating the brain.  
  
"Well, like I say, it depends on the angle," the Doctor said grimly; he just needed confirmation now, but the picture he was getting was almost as terrible as the moment when he'd witnessed the fall of Gallifrey. "It's either the exposed pain centre of big fella's brain, being tortured relentlessly…"  
  
"Or?" Liz said.  
  
"Or it's the gas pedal, the accelerator," the Doctor said. "Starship UK's go faster button."  
  
"I don't understand," Liz said.  
  
"Don't you?" the Doctor said promptingly, his attention turning to Hawthorne as the person apparently in charge of all this. "Try to. Go on. The spaceship that could never fly. No vibration on deck. This creature, this poor, trapped, terrified creature. It's not _infesting_ you, it's not _invading_ , it's what you have instead of an engine. And this place down here is where you hurt it, where you torture it, day after day, just to keep it moving."  
  
Amy couldn't believe it; humanity had sunk _that_ low? Torturing a massive creature to make it power a ship?  
  
"Tell you what," the Doctor said, walking over to the grating and removing the top, allowing the tentacle to emerge. "Normally, it's above the range of human hearing. This is the sound none of you wanted to hear."  
  
Raising the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor aimed it at a nearby tentacle and adjusted the frequency, creating a screaming sound that filled the room, the pain and agony it inspired reminding Amy of those long-ago days when the Doctor hadn't been there…  
  
"Stop it!" Liz said, as the Doctor terminated the screwdriver's signal, the queen quickly turning to look at Hawthorne once again. "Who did this?"  
  
"We act on instructions from the highest authority," Hawthorne said solemnly.  
  
"I am the highest authority," Liz said firmly. "The creature will be released, now."  
  
The lack of reaction from the men around them confirmed the Doctor's growing concerns about what he was dealing with; the implications were grim, but it was the only explanation he could think of…  
  
"I said now!" Liz repeated as she glared at Hawthorne. "Is anyone listening to me?"  
  
"Liz," the Doctor said. "Your mask."  
  
"What about my mask?" Liz asked.  
  
"Look at it," the Doctor clarified, tossing it back to her. "It's old. At least two hundred years old, I'd say."  
  
"Yeah?" Liz said. "It's an antique? So?"  
  
"An antique made by craftsmen over two hundred years ago and perfectly sculpted to your face?" the Doctor pointed out; people could deny the facts sometimes, but not when they were presented to them like this. "They slowed your body clock, all right, but you're not fifty. Nearer three hundred. And it's been a long old reign."  
  
"No, it's ten years," Liz said, in the tone of one repeating something she knew well. "I've been on this throne ten years."  
  
"Ten years," the Doctor said, walking over to a console with two distinctive buttons on it, these ones labelled 'Forget' and 'Abdicate', a small screen positioned above the buttons. "The same ten years over and over again, always leading you here."  
  
"What have you done?" Liz said, looking over at Hawthorne after staring at the buttons in horror for a moment.  
  
"Only what you have ordered," Hawthorne said. "We work for you, ma'am. The Winders, the Smilers, all of us."  
  
With that, he activated the screen above the buttons, revealing a recorded message from Liz Ten that she clearly didn't remember making.  
  
" _If you are watching this… if_ I _am watching this, then I have found my way to the Tower Of London_ ," the recording explained as Liz Ten sat down in front of the screen, the screen shifting to display a graph model of a large creature. " _The creature you are looking at is called a Star Whale. Once, there were millions of them. They lived in the depths of space and, according to legend, guided the early space travellers through the asteroid belts. This one, as far as we are aware, is the last of its kind. And what we have done to it breaks my heart. The Earth was burning. Our sun had turned on us and every other nation had fled to the skies. Our children screamed as the skies grew hotter. And then it came, like a miracle. The last of the Star Whales. We trapped it, we built our ship around it, and we rode on its back to safety. If you wish our voyage to continue, then you must press the Forget button. Be again the heart of this nation, untainted. If not, press the other button. Your reign will end, the Star Whale will be released, and our ship will disintegrate. I hope I keep the strength to make the right decision_."

* * *

_No_ … the Doctor thought, taking in what he'd just heard in horror and barely-supressed outrage, the scale of the cosmic injustice that had been committed virtually terrifying him.  
  
Humanity had always impressed him with their ingenuity and compassion- the last may have had its problems in groups, but individuals could still surprise him- but _this_ was a demonstration of the ingenuity and a complete violation of their compassion…  
  
"I voted for this," Amy said, breaking his train of thought. "Why would I do that?"  
  
"Because you knew if we stayed here, I'd be faced with an impossible choice," the Doctor said, looking grimly over at her. "Humanity or the alien. You took it upon yourself to save me from that. And that was wrong. You don't ever decide what I need to know."  
  
"I don't even remember doing it-" Amy began.  
  
"You did it; that's what counts," the Doctor said; amnesia might excuse how you reacted to this kind of discovery, but it didn't excuse the choices you made even if you couldn't remember them.  
  
"I'm… I'm sorry…" Amy began.  
  
"Doesn't matter," the Doctor said, already making up his mind as to his next decision; clearly, he wasn't ready to let people back into his life yet, not when the universe was so messed up that it could produce crimes like this. "When I'm done here, you're going home."  
  
"What?" Amy said, looking at him in shock. "Because I made one mistake? I don't even remember doing it, Doctor!"  
  
"Yeah, I know; you're only human," the Doctor said, moving over to the console controlling the electrodes; if he was here anyway, he might as well see if he could do something to help this tortured creature continue its enforced role as a source of propulsion…  
  
"What are you doing?" Liz asked.  
  
"The worst thing I'll ever do," the Doctor said, as he began to adjust the dials; destroying Gallifrey had been the act of a desperate man who'd exhausted the alternatives, but this was a decision made with cool practicality that would simply maintain the status quo. "I'm going to pass a massive electrical charge through the Star Whale's brain. Should knock out all its higher functions, leave it a vegetable. The ship will still fly, but the whale won't feel it."  
  
"But… that's like killing it," Amy said.  
  
"Right now, I have three options," the Doctor said, looking grimly up at the two women; he had to say this, but he didn't have to like it. "One, I let the Star Whale continue in unendurable agony for hundreds more years. Two, I kill everyone on this ship. Three, I murder a beautiful, innocent creature as painlessly as I can… and then I find a new name, because I won't be the Doctor any more."  
  
It might almost be easier that way; if he abandoned his old identity, maybe he'd find it easier to stand against the madness of the Grandfather…  
  
"There must be something we can do, some other way-" Liz began.  
  
"Nobody talk to me," the Doctor said; if they honestly thought he hadn't considered the alternatives already, they didn't deserve to object. "Nobody HUMAN has _anything to say to me today_!"  
  
With that statement made, he turned his attention back to his work, trying not to think about the biological implications of what he was trying to do; he was just… taking care of an anomalous bit of programming preventing a ship reaching full power… adjusting the power settings to a more suitable level… he wasn't _lobotomising_ a helpless creature to save another race…  
  
"Wait!" Amy suddenly yelled, cutting off the Doctor's thoughts as she suddenly grabbed Liz Ten by the arm and dragged her over to the voting buttons. "Sorry about this, your Majesty, but I need a hand."  
  
"Amy, no-!" the Doctor began, just as his companion placed Liz Ten's hand on the 'Abdicate' button, causing a sudden tremor to fill the room, along with a sound that could only be the whale roaring as whatever was keeping its brain connected to the system was released…  
  
"What have you _done_?" the Doctor said, looking at Amy in shock; he appreciated her wanting to spare him the anguish, but killing the entire population of England in the future wasn't exactly a _better_ alternative…  
  
"Nothing at all," Amy said, looking around the room with a smile as the ship stopped shaking. "Am I right?"  
  
"We're… increasing speed?" Hawthorne said, looking at another screen in shock.  
  
"Yeah, well, you've stopped torturing the pilot," Amy said, looking pointedly at the old man in the robe. "Got to help."  
  
"It's… still here?" Liz Ten said, looking uncertainly at the hole leading to the Star Whale's brain. "I don't understand…"  
  
"The Star Whale didn't come like a miracle all those years ago," Amy said, her tone solemn as she looked over at the queen. "It volunteered. You didn't have to trap it or torture it; that was all just you. It came because it couldn't stand to watch your children cry."  
  
It came on its own…  
  
The Doctor was ashamed that hadn't occurred to him earlier; with all of space to explore, the odds of something like the Star Whale reaching Earth at just the right time to be useful by sheer chance had to be _ridiculously_ unlikely…  
  
"What if you were really old, and really kind and alone?" Amy continued, looking at the brain as Liz and Hawthorne stood around her. "Your whole race dead. No future. What couldn't you do then? If you were that old, and that kind, and the very last of your kind… you couldn't just stand there and watch children cry."  
  
It was only when he looked up that the Doctor realised that Amy was looking at him when she said that.  
  
The way she said it… as though it was obvious that the last of a race would turn out like that… like she just _knew_ it would be the same…  
  
He'd need to have a talk with her about that- optimism was good, but the Grandfather proved that it could have turned out the other way- but right now, he just wanted to grin and celebrate the fact that he hadn't had to lobotomise anything.

* * *

An hour later, as he stood at a window watching the ship continue its progress through the stars at an accelerated rate, he smiled as Amy walked up beside him, Liz Ten's old mask in her hands before she handed it to him.  
  
"From her Majesty," Amy explained with a grin. "She says there will be no more secrets on Starship UK."  
  
"You could've killed everyone on the ship," the Doctor said, looking briefly over at her before turning his attention back to the city spread out before him.  
  
"You could have killed a Star Whale," Amy replied.  
  
"And you saved it," the Doctor said, looking back at her, wanting to know that she knew how much he appreciated that, even if he couldn't bring himself to say it. "I know, I know."  
  
"Amazing though, don't you think?" Amy said, after they spent a moment staring silently out of the window. "The Star Whale. All that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made it kind."  
  
"But you couldn't have known how it would react," the Doctor said, voicing his main concern; she'd taken a gambit based on such little evidence…  
  
"You couldn't," Amy corrected. "But I've seen it before. Very old and very kind, and the very, very last. Sound a bit familiar?"  
  
"I'm not the only last one," the Doctor pointed out. "The Grandfather-"  
  
"Was infected by a perception-warping virus that turned him into his worst enemy; what he became doesn't count," Amy said, shaking her head firmly as she looked at him for a moment, before she leaned over and gave him a hug that the Doctor couldn't help but return.  
  
 _This_ was what he'd missed for so long (He hadn't been much of a hugger in most of his past lives, but he lived them now and he'd missed the option; that was what counted)…  
  
"Well then," he said, stepping back to grin warmly at her before he indicated the path that would take them back to the TARDIS, "with the Star Whale safe and the UK on the move, shall we go?"  
  
"Anywhere in particular?" Amy asked.  
  
"A few possibilities, but let's just see what turns up," the Doctor said with a firm nod.  
  
If nothing else, there was an exhibit he'd heard some interesting things about that he should probably check out sooner rather than later…


	3. The Home Box

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're going into the alternate 'Time of Angels'/'Flesh and Stone' here, so before anyone starts making comments about how I erased Mels from existence in the original story, I assure you all that I _do_ have a plan; for now, all you need to know that temporal complications involving her Time Lord heritage have resulted in River Song still existing despite _Mels_ having been erased when the Doctor returned for Amy ahead of schedule, and more details will be revealed as the series unfolds.  
> In advance, I will be sticking with some of my own thoughts on River; I apologise in advance to any die-hard fans of her out there, but there were certain aspects of her character I just didn't like even in canon, and my plan for her in this series is going to be particularly complicated…

A museum might be quieter than the kind of destination that Amy had been expecting when it came to travels with the Doctor, but it was probably a good way for them to cool down after the emotional tension of Starship UK and the discovery of the Star Whale, along with the Doctor's brief period of angry grief at the thought of what he'd have to do to preserve humanity.

Besides, the Delerium Archive was kind of interesting in its own way; it might be discussing things that Amy didn't immediately recognise, but there was still a certain appeal about seeing future history recorded in a museum… if it weren't for the fact that the Doctor was currently dismissing certain exhibits as wrong (Which she supposed was to be expected when dealing with a time-traveller who knew the truth about the death of Adolf Hitler, among other things) and was now commenting that certain things were 'his'.

"Is this how you keep score or something?" she asked, looking impatiently over at him. "Because I thought you had the TARDIS for that…"

"Oh, the old girl keeps records, but there are times when you need an external reminder," the Doctor said, shrugging dismissively before his eyes fell on a certain box. "Hold on…"

"What is it?" Amy asked, looking uncertainly at the box; it seemed utterly unremarkable, apart from the strange writing on the side that Amy suddenly realised she recognised from one of the Doctor's old lessons. "Hold on; isn't that-?"

"Gallifreyian," the Doctor confirmed, leaning on the glass covering the box as he stared at it. "Precisely, Pond, which raises the question of who'd graffiti a Home Box with it…"

"A what?" Amy asked.

"A Home Box is like a black box on a plane in your time, except it homes," the Doctor clarified, as he studied the box. "Anything happens to the ship, the Home Box flies home with all the flight data."

"So, that's useful, but… what does it say?" Amy asked.

"There were days," the Doctor said, looking at the writing on the box as though he hadn't heard her, "many days, when these words could burn stars and raise up empires, and topple gods…"

"And what does it say now?" Amy asked, puzzled at the Doctor stalling.

"Hello, sweetie," the Doctor said, looking up at her in a manner that she couldn't quite recognise.

"Hello sweetie?" Amy repeated incredulously. "Who'd write _that_ -?"

"Someone I don't know well but probably has a good reason for doing something like this to attract my attention," the Doctor replied, before he turned his attention back to the case and sighed. "Well, might as well deal with this…"

Amy didn't even have time to ask what he was planning to do before the Doctor had pulled out the sonic screwdriver and jammed it against the glass case, generating a high-pitched sound that briefly hurt Amy's ears before the case shattered. As alarms began to ring around them, the Doctor grabbed the box and ran back towards the TARDIS, Amy hurrying after him as guards emerged from around the corridor and began to chase them before they dived through the doors into the safety of the ship. Even as Amy closed and locked the TARDIS doors behind them, the Doctor was already setting the TARDIS in motion while connecting the Home Box up to the console's monitor screen, tapping buttons on another part of the console that reminded Amy of a typewriter.

"Why did we just do that?" Amy asked.

"Because someone on a spaceship twelve thousand years ago is trying to attract my attention," the Doctor replied, as he tightened a cable that he'd somehow connected to the side of the box. "Let's see if we can get the security playback working …"

As Amy watched the screen, it shifted to show a black-and-white image of a woman with curly fair hair in an elegant black dress, walking out of a vault and lowering her sunglasses to smile at the camera. Looking slightly surprised at the sight, the Doctor adjusted something on the side of the box, and the screen shifted to show the same woman standing in front of some kind of door, smiling at an older man dressed in a tuxedo standing in front of two men armed with large guns, the guns both aimed at the woman.

" _The party's over, Doctor Song_ ," the man in the tuxedo said. " _Yet you're still on board_."

" _Sorry, Alistair_ ," the woman replied; Amy assumed that she was the aforementioned Doctor Song, but she couldn't be certain. " _I needed to see what was in your vault. Do you all know what's down there? Any of you? Because I'll tell you something. This ship won't reach its destination_."

" _Wait 'til she runs_ ," the man who was apparently Alistair said, in a manner that suggested he wasn't going to pay any attention to what Doctor Song had just said (Why was it some people always assumed they knew best when faced with that kind of warning?). " _Don't make it look like an execution_."

" _Triple seven five slash three four nine by ten zero twelve slash acorn_ ," Doctor Song said, glancing at something on her wrist before looking up at the camera. " _Oh, and I could do with an air corridor_."

"What was that?" Amy asked, looking at the Doctor in confusion as he began to work away at another console. "What did she say?"

"Coordinates," the Doctor replied, Amy's attention shifting from the monitor to the TARDIS door as the Doctor moved around so that one hand was hovering over the door control, even as he set what Amy could only assume were the coordinates Doctor Song had just given him with his other hand. As the ship shook while in flight, the Doctor ran around the console for a moment, moving so quickly that Amy could barely keep up with what he was doing- she'd received a few pointers in the key details of TARDIS operation, but this was too fast for her to follow- before he hit the door control and ran for the doors, which opened to receive the very woman in black they'd been watching on the screen moments ago, the woman landing practically on top of the Doctor as they were both sent sprawling to the floor.

"Doctor?" Amy asked, hurrying over to look anxiously at her friend.

"River?" the Doctor said, looking at the woman with a slightly stunned expression, as though he couldn't believe that she was there, only for her to quickly get to her feet and look at the spaceship that was now hurtling away from the TARDIS.

"Follow that ship," the woman said firmly.

"Right," the Doctor said, hurrying over to the console as he quickly set the ship in motion, the mysterious River joining him at the console while Amy held on to the railings.

"They're going into warp drive!" River yelled as she stared at the monitor. "We're losing them; stay close!"

"I'm trying!" the Doctor yelled, adjusting some levers near his current console.

"Use the stabilisers," River called.

"There aren't any stabilisers!" the Doctor replied, still concentrating on the console before him.

"The blue switches," River clarified.

"Hey, the blue ones don't do anything!" Amy called out; the Doctor had dismissed them as unimportant when he'd given her some brief lessons in piloting the TARDIS.

"Of course they do," River said, reaching over to adjust the switches with a slight smile at Amy as the TARDIS's flight suddenly became far less disruptive. "They're the blue _stabilisers_ ; see?"

"Well… it's just boring now, isn't it?" the Doctor said, shaking a lever in frustration as Amy glanced over at the Time Lord in surprise. "They're boring-ers. They're blue boring-ers."

"Uh… how can she fly the TARDIS?" Amy asked, leaning over to whisper to the Doctor.

"You call _that_ flying the TARDIS?" the Doctor said dismissively.

"OK," River said, ignoring their conversation as she moved around the console, "I've mapped the probability vectors, done a fold-back on the temporal isometry, charted the ship to its destination, and… parked us right along side."

"Parked us?" the Doctor repeated, looking scornfully at River. "We haven't landed."

"Of course we've landed," River said smugly, reaching up to move the monitor into a position where the Doctor could see it. "I just landed her."

"You did?" Amy said, looking at River in confusion. "But… it didn't make the… the wheezing noise…"

"It's not supposed to make that noise," River said, smiling at Amy as she indicated the Doctor. " _He_ leaves the brakes on."

"It's… well, it's a brilliant noise; I _love_ that noise," the Doctor said, shooting a frustrated glare at River before turning his attention back to the nearby console screen. "Anyway, we're on Alfava Metraxis, seventh planet of the Dundra System, oxygen rich atmosphere, all toxins in the soft band, eleven-hour day, and chance of rain later…"

"He thinks he's so hot when he does that," River said, looking at Amy with a smile.

"How come you can fly the TARDIS?" Amy asked.

"You call _that_ flying the TARDIS?" the Doctor said, shaking his head in frustration. "That's _Romana_ flying the TARDIS; sticking to the book without improvisation…"

"I learned from the best," River said, smiling over at Amy, ignoring the Doctor's comment before she glanced over at him. "It's a shame you were busy that day… so, why did they land here?"

"They didn't land," the Doctor said, glaring briefly at her, evidently still sore at the comment about his TARDIS-piloting skills. "They crashed."

River stared silently at him for a moment, but then walked out of the TARDIS door, leaving Amy to look critically at him.

"Explain," she said firmly. "Who is that, and how did she do that… museum thing?"

"It's a long story and I don't know most of it…" the Doctor began, before he sighed in frustration. "Well, we'd better get on with it."

"On with it?" Amy repeated.

"I'm not exactly comfortable with this whole situation- that woman represents a puzzle I'd prefer to avoid until I absolutely have to- but if I don't get involved in this now, we run the risk of creating a paradox that could have serious consequences for my past, and I've got enough of those to deal with already with… everything else," the Doctor said, turning his attention to the door with a solemn sigh. "Well, let's get on with it."

As they walked out of the TARDIS, the Doctor and Amy found themselves looking at the same ship they'd seen flying away from them earlier, now a burning wreck sticking out of a building that seemed to have been carved into the rock, the ship's extended pylons twisted and smoke coming from where it had struck the building, even if the worst of the fires had apparently gone out already.

"What caused it to crash?" Amy asked.

"Not me," the blonde woman said,

"Nah, the airlock would've sealed seconds after you blew it," the Doctor confirmed. "According to the Home Box, the warp engines had a phase shift. No survivors."

"A phase shift would have to be sabotage," River said. "I did warn them."

"About what?" the Doctor asked.

"Well, at least the building was empty," River said, ignoring the Doctor's query as she removed some kind of hand-held computer from her bag. "Aplan temple; unoccupied for centuries."

"Aren't you going to introduce us?" Amy asked, after a moment's silence had passed, River looking at her equipment and the Doctor and Amy just standing behind her.

"Amy Pond," the Doctor said, indicating the woman standing before them, "Professor River Song."

"I'm going to be a professor some day, am I?" River said, looking back at him with a smile. "Spoilers."

"Yeah, but who is she and how did she do that?" Amy asked, when the Doctor's slightly indignant expression made it clear that he wasn't going to respond to that query on his own. "She just left you a note in a museum…"

"Two things always guaranteed to show up in a museum," River said, evidently having been listening to the conversation (Amy didn't like that; wasn't she entitled to some privacy when talking to her friend?). "The Home Box of a category four starliner, and, sooner or later, him. It's how he keeps score."

" _One_ of the ways he keeps score," Amy corrected.

"You know," the Doctor said, looking firmly at River, "I'm not a taxi service you can call for whenever you're in a difficult position, and what are we looking for on a ship that crashed like that anyway?"

"There's one survivor," River said, looking back at him. "There's a thing in the belly of that ship that can't ever die."

Looking back at him for a moment, River smiled and then turned her attention back to the device in her hands as it emitted a strange beep.

"You lot in orbit yet?" she said, holding it to her ear as she walked off to a different area of the current 'beach'. "Yeah, I saw it land. I'm at the crash site. Try and home in on my signal. Doctor, can you sonic me? I need to boost the signal so we can use it as a beacon."

Rolling his eyes in frustration, the Doctor raised the sonic and aimed it at River's communicator as she held it above her head, the archaeologist subsequently lowering the device back to her side as she pulled out a blue book with a TARDIS-like cover.

"We have a moment; where are we up to?" she asked with a smile. "Have we done the Bone Meadows?"

"What's the book?" Amy asked.

"Stay away from it," the Doctor said firmly.

"What is it, though?" Amy asked.

"Her diary," the Doctor clarified.

" _Our_ diary," River replied with a smile.

"Her past, my future," the Doctor said. "We keep meeting in the wrong order."

"Oh," Amy said, immediately realising why the Doctor was so concerned about this meeting; with Faction Paradox in power, meeting people out-of-sequence could be _very_ dangerous if the wrong thing came up in conversation…

The Doctor was saved from having to elaborate further as four small tornadoes suddenly appeared in the dust nearby, the tornados swiftly turning into four soldiers, three of whom took in their surroundings while the fourth, oldest soldier walked over to River.

"You promised me an army, Doctor Song," the man said, looking grimly at her.

"No, I promised you the equivalent of an army," River said, indicating the Time Lord with a smile. "This is the Doctor."

"Father Octavian, sir; Bishop, second-class," the older man said, turning to address the Doctor, initial doubts apparently quelled. "Twenty clerics at my command; the troops are already in the drop ship and landing shortly. Doctor Song was helping us with a covert investigation. Has Doctor Song explained what we're dealing with?"

"Doctor," River said, turning to look at the Time Lord with a smile as he looked curiously back at her, "what do you know of the Weeping Angels?"

Amy had only heard that name a couple of times- the Doctor had mentioned an incident that had resulted in him being trapped in 1969 for a few months until he could make arrangements to have the TARDIS sent back to his current location- but she'd heard enough to know that anything involving the Angels would be _very_ difficult to deal with…


	4. The Maze of the Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In advance to anyone who wonders about the differences between Amy's actions here and what she did in canon- all other changes tie in to that change; I think the result works- keep in mind that this version of Amy has spent the last few years 'training' to be the Doctor's companion; she still enjoys her travels, but she's more serious about it and has a clearer idea what she can do to aid her friend in a crisis (And the Eleventh Doctor's had the chance to 'mature' a bit as well as opposed to his original approach; having to act as Amy's responsible teacher has given him some new priorities)

"So," Amy asked a few hours later, a camp established around the base as they waited for the soldiers to be ready to move in, the Doctor having spent that time talking with the soldiers while Amy studied a book that River had provided her about the Weeping Angels, "what are we dealing with here?"

"Well," the Doctor said, sitting down alongside Amy as he looked thoughtfully at her, "whatever that Angel's after, it's either in that ship or in the catacomb network leading up to the temple; according to Father Octavian, access from the top is too close to the drives, so they're working on blowing through the base of the cliffs."

"Bit blunt, isn't it?" Amy asked, looking thoughtfully at him.

"It's the best we can do right now against something as dangerous as a Weeping Angel," the Doctor said, sighing as he glanced over at the work being carried out on the wall.

"As long as we're talking, why do they call him Father?" Amy asked, indicating Octavian as he coordinated the soldiers' efforts.

"He's their Bishop, they're his Clerics," the Doctor said. "It's the fifty-first century, the church has moved on; taking action to guard us in this life as well as the next."

"Ah," Amy said, shifting her attention to River, who had traded in her evening wear for a set of BDUs from the Clerics. "And… who's she?"

"River Song?" the Doctor said, looking at the archaeologist with a sigh. "It's… complicated."

"How complicated?" Amy asked, suppressing the initial urge to ask if River was the Doctor's wife; she talked to him in a very casual manner, and she was clearly someone from his future, but Amy just… she didn't _want_ to think of something like that when she was still wrestling with her own feelings for her friend…

"Right now, I'm more concerned about going through a bunch of catacombs known as the Maze of the Dead," the Doctor said, looking back at the ship. "We're entering a darkened environment to track down the deadliest, most powerful, most malevolent life form evolution has ever produced, capable of moving at rapid speeds when nobody can see it, and I'm supposed to climb in after it with a screwdriver and a torch, and assuming I survive the radiation long enough and assuming the whole ship doesn't explode in my face, I then have to do something incredibly clever which I haven't actually thought of yet…"

"Couldn't we just… do what you did to stop the Angel last time?" Amy asked.

"That relied on me dealing with four angels operating as basic scavengers after a specific goal; here we have one angel of undetermined power reserves and unknown objectives, so that won't work," the Doctor explained, looking over at the basic base-camp the Clerics had set up. "I've spoken with River about its history and learned that the angel was salvaged from the ruins of Razbahan at the end of last century, moving through private hands ever since, but I don't agree with the idea of it being dormant; there's a difference between dormant and patient, after all."

"Right…" Amy said, sighing as she looked at the book in her hands. "Sorry, but the person who wrote this didn't seem to have much sense of structure…"

"He was a madman writing about the most dangerous race in the universe; we should be impressed he was able to put _anything_ together," the Doctor pointed out.

"Good point," Amy said, before she looked uncertainly at him. "But… just to get another perspective… if they just turn into stone and send you back in time when they touch you… what can they _do_ that makes them dangerous?"

"The Angels' limitations are complicated to define at the best of times, Pond; considering what we don't know about them, it's best not to give them chance to develop," the Doctor said, before his attention returned to studying the ship. "And that's before I think about the risks caused by the hyperdrive; the whole ship will be flooded with drive burn radiation, cracked electrons, gravity storms… deadly to almost any living thing, but dinner to an Angel."

"It could get stronger?" Amy asked.

"To a dangerous degree," the Doctor said, before he looked back at the soldiers, hard at work around the walls of the building where the ship had crashed. "They seem to be making progress at that end, anyway; hopefully we'll be inside the catacombs soon."

"Good," Amy said, pausing for a moment before something came to her that she was almost ashamed she hadn't asked earlier. "By the way, who lives here anyway?"

"Do you mean here-here, or here-the planet?" the Doctor asked.

"The second," Amy answered; their current location looked like it had been deserted for some time.

"Originally home to the Aplans before they died out four hundred years ago," the Doctor replied. "These days it's home to six billion human colonists after it was terraformed two centuries ago; if we don't stop the Angel now, things could get complicated…"

"Such as it sending people into the past?" Amy asked.

It wasn't hard to figure out that the Angel's abilities were the main reason that the Doctor was so concerned about their presence; with the Faction out there now, eager for any opportunity that would allow them to further disrupt causality, something that practically existed to send people to the wrong part of history would be just the kind of asset they needed.

"Among other things…" the Doctor said, picking up the book and flicking through it for a moment before his eyes narrowed as he turned to a particular passage. "Hold on a minute…"

"What?" Amy asked.

"This bit here," the Doctor said, opening the book. "There's a lot of stuff in here that doesn't quite make sense- things about how the eyes are the doors to the soul, the Angels are ideas and dreams that don't need us any more; the writer might just have been rambling later on- but there's also this bit early on that sounds like it should be taken more literally; 'That which holds the image of an angel becomes itself an angel'."

"That which holds the image…?" Amy began, before her eyes widened in horror at the implications, the Doctor's grim expression making it clear that he'd come to the same conclusion. "Wait a minute; if pictures of the Angels _become_ Angels…"

" _The recording_!" the Doctor yelled, looking at Amy in horror before they both sprang to their feet and ran towards the dropship, diving through the door just as Father Octavian and River Song were looking uncertainly at the recording of the Angel from the _Byzantium_ 's cargo hold, which had moved from its original position of standing against the wall with its back to the camera to the point where it was facing the camera directly.

"Oh, there you-" River began as she turned to look at him before the Doctor grabbed the remote, looked at the screen for a moment, and then paused the screen in the moment before the four-second recording started over again, subsequently grabbing a nearby chair and smashing the screen before anyone could object.

"What-?" River began.

" _Read_ your material, Doctor Song; _that which holds the image of an angel becomes itself an angel_ ," the Doctor said, brandishing the book in River's face as he glared at her. "In other words, if that recording had kept on running, the Angel in the recording could have become a _real_ Angel!"

"What?" River said, looking at him shock that quickly shifted to horror. "Oh my God…"

"Yeah; next time someone gives you a book on the most dangerous thing in the universe, _read it_!" the Doctor said, slamming the book into her arms before he walked out of the ship in a huff, unconcerned about the archaeologist's feelings as Amy hurried after him. "Honestly, give someone a few by-the-book lessons and they think they know it all…"

It was slightly petty, he knew, but he just didn't like the way River seemed to think she had every right to casually wander into his life, ask for his help, and/or say that he couldn't manage without her; she might make things easier than they would have been, but he didn't need her as much as she seemed to think.

Frankly, her attitude would have annoyed him even without the Faction now breathing down his neck; the fact that they were out there waiting for an excuse to hi-jack his timeline again, when someone was going around interacting with him in reverse order, just made it all the more complicated.

River's comment about having pictures of all his faces didn't make him feel much better about his temporally complex interaction with her; if she had that kind of information surely she should be aware that there were certain faces she _couldn't_ meet without it getting temporally complicated, but she acted as though it was nothing to be concerned about…

The news that the catacombs had been opened was actually a welcome chance to think about something else right now; at least in the catacombs he'd be facing something that he _knew_ was dangerous, rather than the questions raised by River's seemingly contradictory knowledge and actions.

* * *

As they descended into the Maze of the Dead, the Doctor tried not to think about the scale of the task ahead of them; he'd become better at working with soldiers over the years, but this wasn't another trip with UNIT and the Brigadier, this was an expedition with a group of soldiers with no known ties to him and a woman who knew him very well that he didn't really _know_ at all.  
  
He really missed those days at UNIT sometimes; he might have been stuck on one planet, but at least he'd made some good friends during his time there (To say nothing of all the time he'd saved when he had people around to confirm that he shouldn't be locked up because he might have caused what he was there to stop)…  
  
"Perfect hiding place for a living statue, isn't it?" Amy said, looking anxiously at him as he studied their surroundings while the Clerics released the gravity globe into the air, illuminating the assembled statues and caverns.  
  
"To say the least, Pond," the Doctor observed, shaking his head in frustration. "This is going to be tricky…"  
  
"A stone Angel on the loose amongst stone statues," Octavian noted grimly. "A lot harder than I'd prayed for."  
  
"A needle in a haystack," River said.  
  
"That also happens to look like hay," Amy added; the Doctor wondered if she'd said that to avoid being upstaged by the other woman, but this wasn't the time to criticise about some minor competition.  
  
"Right," Octavian said, turning to address his clerics. "Check every single statue in this chamber. You know what you're looking for. Complete visual inspection. One question. How do we fight it?"  
  
"Find it and hope," the Doctor said, crossing his fingers in his pockets; he'd come up with a better plan when the time came…

* * *

While the Doctor hurried on through the Maze, sticking with the soldiers as they searched for the missing Angel, Amy found herself falling to the back for reasons even she wasn't sure of at first, until she found herself walking alongside River Song and realised her subconscious motives; she wanted to talk with the anomaly without the Doctor present.  
  
"So… what's the Maze of the Dead?" she asked, deciding to tackle the most obvious question first.  
  
"Oh, it's not as bad as it sounds; it's just a labyrinth with dead people buried in the walls," River said, only to be met with a sceptical stare from Amy at that description. "OK, that was fairly bad. Right, give me your arm; this won't hurt a bit."  
  
Puzzled at the change of topic but seeing no reason to make a fuss about it, Amy held out her arm, only to yelp in pain as River injected her with a small object that looked like a weird combination of a gun and a syringe.  
  
"There, you see, I lied," River said, smiling apologetically at her (Why hadn't someone worked out how to make those hypospray things in _Star Trek_ real by now?). "It's a viro-stabiliser; stabilises your metabolism against radiation, drive burn, anything. You're going to need it when we get up to that ship."  
  
"So… what's he like?" Amy asked; she'd established a groundwork, now it was time to tackle the things she didn't want to think about before she chickened out. "In the future, I mean. Because you know him in the future, don't you?"  
  
"The Doctor?" River said, smiling in an awkward manner. "Well, the Doctor's the Doctor."  
  
"Ah," Amy said, wondering if she should say any more before deciding against it; if River wasn't going to give a straight answer to a straight question, trying to get something out of her in a more subtle manner probably wouldn't work (And she was _not_ prepared to ask if River was actually the Doctor's future wife; whatever the answer, Amy wasn't even sure if she _wanted_ to know it yet)…  
  
The sound of gunfire from up ahead prompted Amy to pick up the pace, but she didn't need to go all the way to front to see that things were all right. From what she could hear, the Doctor was talking to a panicked Cleric who'd shot at a statue by accident, reassuring him that fear would be an asset in this search, before Father Octavian ordered the group to split up and conduct their search, prompting her and River to walk over and join the Doctor as the search resumed once more.  
  
"So… we're safe, right?" Amy asked, glancing over at River as another thought occurred to her after she and the older woman had joined the Doctor, followed closely by Father Octavian and a few other Clerics. "I mean, we have a spaceship over our heads, but this place isn't going to… collapse on us or anything, right?"  
  
"Incredible builders, the Aplans," River said with a reassuring smile.  
  
"Had dinner with their Chief Architect once," the Doctor added. "Two heads are better than one."  
  
"What, you helped him build this?" Amy asked.  
  
"No, I mean he had two heads," the Doctor clarified, their small group progressing along another corridor. "Very relaxed species, the Aplans, always sort of cheerful… that's the advantage of having two heads; you're never short of a snog."  
  
Now that he mentioned that fact about the Aplans' heads, something about this place seemed off…  
  
"Of course," the Doctor continued, shaking his head at the memory and interrupting Amy's train of thought, "then they started having laws against self-marrying, which probably prevented a lot of messy divorces…"  
  
His eyes fell on a nearby statue, and the full danger of their current situation hit him. "Oh no."  
  
"What?" Amy asked; she had a sudden feeling she knew what she had missed earlier, but didn't want to say it herself in case she'd just missed something about Aplan culture.  
  
"Either it was a low-level perception filter, or we were all too busy being clever to realise that we were being thick," the Doctor said grimly.  
  
"What's the problem?" Octavian asked, looking back at him.  
  
"Nobody move," the Doctor said firmly. "Nobody move. Everyone stay exactly where they are. Bishop, I am truly sorry. I've made a mistake and we are all in terrible danger."  
  
"What danger?" Octavian asked.  
  
"The Aplans," River clarified.  
  
"What about the Aplans?" Octavian asked.  
  
"They have two heads," River repeated.  
  
"And the _statues_ don't…" Amy finished for the older woman, eyes widening as she looked at the statues around them, her subconscious fears confirmed.  
  
She'd assumed that their nondescript condition was just due to general wear and tear, but now that she thought about it, this place had been sealed off from the outside elements for centuries which should have protected the statues from wear and tear, and she was fairly sure that statue over in the corner had a few more distinct features than it had earlier…  
  
"How long until we get to the ship?" the Doctor's voice, breaking Amy's gradually-increasing sense of panic.  
  
"Lowest point in the wreckage is only about fifty feet up from here… that way," Octavian said, indicating the appropriate direction.  
  
"OK, we've gone up four levels already, and the Mazes traditionally have six; two levels to go, so we should be able to do that if we move quickly…" the Doctor said, glancing anxiously around for a moment until his gaze settled on Octavian. "Get in contact with the rest of your teams and have them meet us here as soon as possible."  
  
"Why?" Octavian asked.  
  
"The statues are Angels," the Doctor said grimly, indicating the statues with a wave of his torch. "And if we don't get to the main cavern, we're in _serious_ trouble…"  
  
"But there was only one Angel on the ship-!" River began.  
  
"Unless _these_ ones were here already…" Amy pointed out, exchanging anxious glances with the Doctor at the thought.  
  
"The Aplans," the Doctor said, glancing over at River. "What happened? How did they die out?"  
  
"Nobody knows," River replied.  
  
"Until now," the Doctor corrected, grimly indicating the surrounding statues; evidently Amy's half-formed thought had been correct.  
  
"They don't look like Angels," Octavian pointed out.  
  
"And they're not fast," Amy added, seizing on the fragile hope she'd just realised. "You said they were fast; shouldn't they have… attacked us by now?"  
  
"Look at them," the Doctor explained, indicating the poorly-carved statues. "They're dying, losing their form; they must have been down here for centuries, starving."  
  
"Losing their image?" Amy asked.  
  
"And as the book said, their image is their power…" the Doctor said, briefly grim before his eyes widened in horror. " _Power_ …"  
  
"Doctor?" Amy asked, looking uncertainly at him.  
  
"Don't you see?" the Doctor said, looking urgently at them. "All that radiation spilling out of the drive burn… the crash of the _Byzantium_ wasn't an accident, it was a rescue mission for the Angels. We're in the middle of an army, and it's waking up!"  
  
 _Oh_ , shit, Amy thought, as she took in the statues around them; they were surrounded by an army of time-bending indestructible statues that could move at a speed that made the Flash seem slow…  
  
"We need to get out of here, fast," River said.  
  
"Bob, Angelo, Christian, come in, please," Octavian said as he activated his radio, contacting the rest of the Clerics. "Any of you, come in."  
  
" _It's Bob, sir_ ," a voice replied. " _Sorry, sir_."  
  
"Bob, are Angelo and Christian with you?" Octavian asked urgently. "All the statues are active. I repeat, all the statues are active!"  
  
" _I know, sir_ ," Bob's voice replied. " _Angelo and Christian are dead, sir. The statues killed them, sir_."  
  
"Bob," the Doctor said, reaching over to grab Octavian's radio from him, ignoring Octavian's protests at the interruption, "Sacred Bob, it's me, the Doctor; where are you now?"  
  
" _I'm on my way up to you, sir_ ," the voice replied. " _I'm homing in on your signal_."  
  
"Ah, well done, Bob," the Doctor said. "Scared keeps you fast; told you, didn't I? Your friends, Bob. What did the Angel do to them?"  
  
" _Snapped their necks, sir_ ," Bob replied.  
  
"Snapped their necks?" Amy repeated, looking sharply at the Doctor. "I thought you said the Angels just… moved people in time?"  
  
"They must be keeping the bodies for something; probably need all the resources they can get while waking up like this," the Doctor said, shrugging the thought off as he turned his attention back to the radio. "So, Bob, how did you survive?"  
  
" _I didn't, sir_ ," Bob responded. " _The Angel killed me too_."  
  
"What do you mean, the Angel killed you?" the Doctor asked, after exchanging glances with the rest of the group to confirm that they'd heard the same thing.  
  
" _Snapped my neck, sir_ ," Bob's voice replied. " _Wasn't as painless as I expected, but it was pretty quick, so that was something_."  
  
"If you're dead, how can I be talking to you?" the Doctor asked.  
  
" _You're not talking to me, sir_ ," Bob's voice said, in a neutral manner that seemed ridiculously inappropriate for the current topic. " _The Angel has no voice. It stripped my cerebral cortex from my body and re-animated a version of my consciousness to communicate with you. Sorry about the confusion_."  
  
"Oh God…" Amy said, staring at the radio in the Doctor's hand in horror; she thought about asking if the original Bob would be aware of what had happened to him if the Angel was using his consciousness to talk to them like this, but swiftly decided that she didn't want to ask in case the answer was 'yes'…  
  
"So when you say you're on your way up to us…" the Doctor continued.  
  
" _It's the Angel that's coming; yes, sir_ ," the Angel using Bob's voice said. " _No way out_."  
  
"Then we get out through the wreckage," the Doctor said, looking up at the clerics. "Go! Go, go, go; all of you, run!"  
  
As the remaining clerics ran past him, the Doctor placed a hand on Octavian's arm to look apologetically at the seemingly-older man. "Sorry about this, but there's no way we can rescue your men…"  
  
"I know that, sir," Octavian said, looking grimly at the Time Lord. "And when you've flown away in your little blue box, I'll-"  
  
"Recognise that he would have given _anything_ to save them," Amy interrupted, walking over to stand between the Doctor and Octavian with a firm glare on her face as she looked at the bishop. "Just because he doesn't always stick around afterwards doesn't mean he doesn't care about the losses suffered while he's here, and you do _not_ get to accuse him otherwise. Clear?"  
  
Despite his training, Octavian could only nod in acknowledgement when faced with that stare before he hurried on after his remaining men, leaving the Doctor to turn the radio on again as Amy looked at him. "Angel Bob, which Angel am I talking to? The one from the ship?"  
  
" _Yes sir_ ," 'Angel Bob' replied. " _And the other Angels are still restoring_."  
  
"Ah, so the Angel is _not_ in the wreckage; thank you," the Doctor said, pocketing the radio once again before he grabbed Amy's wrist and hurried towards the wreckage after the clerics.  
  
It didn't take long to reach the bottom of the cavern where the ship had crashed, but it was also fairly easy for Amy to see that they were still stuck for options once they reached their destination; their forces were down to a relative handful of clerics, their torches were flickering in and out, more and more statues were appearing from the caves around them, and there was no way to get up to the ship that she could see…  
  
"There's no way up, no way back, no way out," River said, neatly summing up the situation before she looked over at the Doctor. "No pressure, but this is usually when you have a really good idea."  
  
"There's always a way out…" the Doctor said, scanning his surroundings in a manner that Amy recognised from when he was trying not to think about something (And she just wished she didn't know what it likely was; he was remembering the time when the only way out went horribly wrong…).  
  
" _Doctor_?" the radio said, still using Bob's voice. " _Can I speak to the Doctor, please_?"  
  
"Hello, Angels," the Doctor said, raising the radio to his face with a slight smile that Amy recognised as his 'smile in the face of danger or go mad' look. "What's your problem?"  
  
" _Your power will not last much longer, and the Angels will be with you shortly_ ," the voice replied. " _Sorry, sir_."  
  
Amy had to wonder why the Angel said that last part; was it some residual fragment of Bob's personality apologising for being used like this, or was the Angel just trying to screw with the Doctor…?  
  
"Why are you telling me this?" the Doctor asked.  
  
" _There's something the Angels are very keen you should know before the end_ ," the voice continued, in a manner that could have been answering the Doctor's question or just continuing the previous sentence.  
  
"Which is?" the Doctor asked.  
  
" _I died in fear_ ," Bob's voice replied.  
  
"I'm sorry?" the Doctor said, after a moment's pause.  
  
" _You told me my fear would keep me alive, but I died afraid, in pain and alone_ ," the voice continued. " _You made me trust you, and when it mattered, you let me down_."  
  
In a strange way, that news made Amy feel better about their chances of victory than she had before.  
  
Clearly, if these Angels thought that the Doctor would be easier to stop when he was angry, they didn't know him at all; in her experience, when the Doctor was angry, that was when the monsters should get _really_ scared.  
  
" _The Angels were very keen for you to know that_ ," Bob's voice concluded.  
  
"Well then," the Doctor said, in the low, deep voice that he always used when he was feeling particularly angry, "the Angels have made their second mistake because I'm not going to let that pass. I'm sorry you're dead, Bob, but I swear to whatever is left of you, they will be sorrier."  
  
" _But you're trapped, sir_ ," Bob's voice said. " _And about to die_."  
  
"Yeah, I'm trapped," the Doctor said, scanning his surroundings once again. "And you know what? Speaking of traps, this trap has got a great big mistake in it; a great big, whopping mistake!"  
  
" _What mistake, sir_?" Bob's voice asked, only for the Doctor to ignore it as he looked over at Amy.  
  
"Trust me," he said simply.  
  
"Always," Amy replied; the situation might seem impossible, but she'd learned long ago that the Doctor would _always_ pull through when he was needed…  
  
"Trust me?" the Time Lord said as he glanced over at River.  
  
"Always," River said, repeating Amy's words.  
  
"You lot," the Doctor continued, looking at the clerics. "Trust me?"  
  
"We have faith, sir," Octavian said simply.  
  
"Then give me your gun," the Doctor said, holding out a hand to receive Octavian's weapon, checking its available ammunition before he looked around at the group. "I'm about to do something incredibly stupid and dangerous. When I do, jump."  
  
"Jump where?" Octavian asked.  
  
"Just jump, high as you can," the Doctor said. "Come _on_ , leap of faith, Bishop, on my signal."  
  
"What signal?" Octavian asked.  
  
"You won't miss it," the Doctor said, raising the gun above him as Amy could only stare at her friend in confusion; considering the Doctor's notorious distaste for weapons, seeing him holding a gun felt wrong on _so_ many levels…  
  
" _Sorry, can I ask again_?" the Angel using Bob's voice said over the radio. " _You mentioned a mistake we made_?"  
  
"Oh, big mistake," the Doctor said firmly, the lights still flickering around them as he seemed to be taking aim at something above their heads. "Big, big mistake; really _huge_. Didn't anyone ever tell you? There's one thing you never put in a trap; if you're smart, if you value your continued existence, if you have _any_ plans of seeing tomorrow, there's one thing you never _ever_ put in a trap."  
  
" _And would that be, sir_?" Bob's voice asked.  
  
"Me," the Doctor replied coldly.  
  
He fired the gun, something exploded above them, Amy jumped…


	5. Onto the Byzantium

For a moment, Amy didn't know what had just happened, the jump leaving her feeling unusually disorientated for what should have been nothing more than a short hop, but it didn't take long for her to realise what had happened as she looked around herself; somehow, they were now standing on the external hull of the _Byzantium_ , with the Angels now gathered on the ground below them.

"What the…?" Amy said, looking around herself in shock. "What just happened?"

"Ship crashed with the power still on, so the artificial gravity is still on," the Doctor explained, helping Amy to her feet as River and the Clerics did the same before he turned his attention to a circular indentation in the floor that they were now standing on. "I shot out the grav-globe to give us an updraft as we jumped, and _whoosh_! Artificial gravity takes over and we're pulled back up to the ship."

Amy wasn't sure if she should be scared or impressed at what had happened; on the one hand, she was technically standing upside-down above a cave filled with the most dangerous creatures in the universe, but she was standing on a spaceship…

"Doctor," Octavian said, his gun still aimed at the statues 'above' them as the Doctor continued to work at the indentation in the ground that Amy suddenly realised must be a hatch of some sort. "The statues… they look more like Angels now."

"They're feeding on the radiation from the wreckage, draining all the power from the ship, restoring themselves," the Doctor explained. "Within an hour, they'll be an army!"

He paused for a moment to grin as the door opened, but the smile faltered as the lights began to flicker once again, a couple of bulbs shattering.

"They're taking out the lights," he said, answering the question nobody had the nerve to ask. "Everyone into the ship, quickly now!"

"But-?" Amy began, only for the Doctor slip inside the hole in front of him, a quick glance inside revealing that he was now standing casually on what looked like the corridor's ground level despite being on a forty-five-degree angle from the cavern floor below them.

"Gravity automatically orientates to the floor once you're inside," the Doctor explained, smiling briefly at the group before he became more serious. "Now, in here, all of you, and don't take your eyes off the Angels. Move, move, move!"

After a complicated flurry of activity, the remaining Clerics, Amy and River had joined the Doctor in the corridor, at least one Cleric always keeping an eye on the Angels below them until the hatch was finally sealed.

"The Angels," Octavian said, looking at the Doctor with only slight anxiety. "Presumably they can't jump up too?"

"They're here," the Doctor said in response, staring grimly at the hatch. "In the dark, we're finished; _run_!"

Their potential escape was interrupted when the door at the other end of the corridor slid shut, alarms blaring just in time to alert the Doctor to what was happening but not soon enough for him to stop it.

"This whole place is a death trap," Octavian said, staring grimly at the door.

"No, it's a time bomb," the Doctor corrected the bishop. "Well, it's a death trap and a time bomb. And now it's a dead end. Nobody panic."

The sound of a loud clang from outside the hull that could only be an Angel trying to gain access did little to help Amy follow the Doctor's instructions; she trusted him, but trust could only take you so far in a situation like this…

"Right then," the Doctor said, glancing over at River where she was staring at the hatch, small explosions coming from around it. "What's through that door?"

"Secondary flight deck," River answered.

"Uh… just to be sure I'm clear, we've basically run up the inside of a chimney, yeah?" Amy asked, looking over at the Doctor. "What if the gravity fails?"

"I've thought about it," the Doctor replied, even as he turned to study the door between them and the flight deck.

"And?" Amy asked.

"We all plunge horribly to our deaths," the Doctor answered, looking back at her with a sheepish expression of apology. "I said I'd thought about it; I never said I had an answer." Ignoring Amy's frustrated stare, he focused his attention on the door for a few moments before he stood back with a sigh. "The security protocols are still live. There's no way to override them, it's impossible."

"How impossible?" River asked.

"Two minutes," the Doctor said, quickly setting to work at the door before him just before the hum that Amy now guessed had been the ship's engines running faded around them. Amy wasn't sure if it was power failure or something else, but as the hum lowered the outer door opened once again to reveal the cavern they'd just left, Angels still gathered at the bottom like hungry wolves waiting for their prey to fall…

"The hull is breached and the power is failing," Octavian said, staring grimly at the open hatch as an Angel's arm appeared through the hole. "Clerics, keep watching them!"

"And don't look at their eyes; anywhere else, not the eyes!" the Doctor yelled, the sonic screwdriver working away at a set of cables that River Song had pulled out of a nearby pipe, the darkness ending to reveal a group of three Angel statues at the other end of the corridor and the now-sealed door.

"I've isolated the lighting grid," the Doctor said. "They can't drain the power now."

"Good work, Doctor," Octavian said.

"Yes, good," the Doctor said, turning back towards the door. "Good in many ways, glad you like it so far…"

"So far?" Amy asked apprehensively.

"Well, there's only one way to open this door," the Doctor explained, indicating another control panel on the opposite side of the wall from the pipe River had been working at earlier. "With the ship in its current state, I'll need to route all the power in this section through the door control."

"Good, fine, do it," Octavian said.

"Including the lights," the Doctor said. "All of them; I'll need to turn out the lights."

"How long for?" Octavian asked, voicing the problem that even Amy could see immediately.

"Fraction of a second, maybe longer," the Doctor replied, rubbing his face uncomfortably. "Maybe quite a bit longer…"

"Maybe?" Octavian repeated.

"I'm guessing," the Doctor said defensively. "We're being attacked by statues in a crashed ship; there isn't a manual for this!"

"Just to be sure, nobody has a torch they've been saving for emergencies, right?" Amy asked, glancing anxiously around the small corridor at the remaining Clerics, only to be met with a shake of the head by all concerned parties.

"There's no other way," the Doctor said grimly, checking the door one last time before he looked at Octavian. "Bishop?"

"Doctor Song," Octavian said, turning to the archaeologist, "I've lost good Clerics today. You trust this man?"

"I absolutely trust him," River said.

"He's not some kind of madman then?" Octavian asked.

"I absolutely trust him," River repeated herself. Amy thought about objecting to that description, but decided that it wasn't worth the effort; the Doctor had admitted himself that he was a 'madman with a box', even if it was the most incredible box she'd ever seen.

"Excuse me," the Doctor said, taking Octavian's silence as consent as he set to work on the door, Octavian taking River off to the side to talk to her while Amy kept her gaze fixed on the open external hatch; she might not have a weapon, but she'd won a few staring contests in her time…

"OK, Doctor," Octavian said, attention fixed on the door as he connected various cables up to the door, "we've got your back."

"Bless you, Bishop," the Doctor said.

"Combat distance, ten feet," Octavian said, turning to address his Clerics as they took up defensive position between the Doctor and the Angels. "As soon as the lights go down, continuous fire. Full spread over the hostiles. Do not stop firing while the lights are out. Shot gun protocol, we don't have bullets to waste."

"Amy," the Doctor added, looking over at her as she handed him the last of the wires, "when the lights go down, the wheel should release. Spin it clockwise, four turns."

"Four turns clockwise; understood," Amy said, placing her hands on the wheel and praying that this wasn't going to be the biggest mistake they'd ever made…

"Ready!" the Doctor said, placing the sonic screwdriver inside the dismantled panel.

"On my count, then," Octavian said grimly. "God be with us all. Three… two… one."

As the main lights went dark, Octavian ordered the Clerics to start firing while Amy desperately pulled at the wheel, aided by River; even if it was released from the lock, it was still incredibly hard to turn… she and River Song were straining against it with everything they had and it still didn't feel like it would be enough…

As the door finally seemed to give, Amy practically dived through the opening as River did the same, followed closely by the Doctor and the remaining Clerics. Hurrying down a virtually identical corridor to the next door, the Doctor once again held it open as the Clerics and his companions went through- this one fortunately easier to seal- subsequently diving through the door as it slid shut behind them. The room they were in now was very obviously some kind of control room, but it looked as though the ship's owners had been forced to carry out some impromptu maintenance at the last minute, with various panels hanging open and exposed wires all over. As the Doctor moved over to one of the control panels, Octavian walked over to place some kind of device on the door, halting the central wheel as it began to spin.

"What did that do?" Amy asked.

"Magnetises the door," Octavian explained. "Nothing could turn that wheel now."

The sight of the wheel starting to turn undermined that statement- it was slower than before, but it was still moving- leaving the Clerics exchanging anxious glances as Octavian stared at the wheel in horror.

"Don't worry about that!" the Doctor said, looking firmly at Octavian. "You brought us time, and that's good; I am good with time…"

As the Clerics rushed to seal the remaining doors into the room, Amy tried not to think about just how little time they had before something happened; she was scared enough without thinking about the fact that they were just a few minutes away from being killed by some of the most dangerous beings the Doctor had ever encountered…

"We need another way out of here," River said, as the last door was sealed as much as the clerics could accomplish with their available resources.

"There isn't one," Octavian said grimly.

"Yeah, there is, 'course there is," the Doctor said, looking around the console room. "This is a galaxy class ship, goes for years between planet-falls. So…" he snapped his fingers, "what do they need?"

"Of course," River said, the Doctor snapping his fingers in acknowledge of River's statement.

"Of course what?" Amy asked, trying not to sound too embarrassed at the fact that she seemed to be the only one who hadn't realised what the Doctor was talking about; when he was giving her lessons about the universe as a whole, it was only natural that he'd miss some details.

"Can we get in there?" Octavian asked.

"Well, it's a sealed unit, but they must have installed it somehow," the Doctor explained, pressing against the rear wall. "This whole wall should slide up… There's clamps. Release the clamps!"

"What's though there?" Amy asked, as the Doctor moved a couple of large boxes away from their initial position against the wall and began to use the sonic screwdriver on what she assumed were the clamps he'd just been talking about. "What do they need?"

"They need to breathe," River explained, as the door the Doctor had been working on rose up to reveal what Amy could only think of a vast forest, _inside a spaceship_ …

"It's… that's how they make oxygen?" she said, looking over at the Doctor.

"Precisely, Pond," the Doctor said, grinning at her in approval before he turned to look back at the forest. "And, if we're lucky, it can double up as an escape route…"

He paused in contemplation for a moment before looking anxiously over at another Cleric. "Check the architecture; apart from anything else, if there's another exit, we don't want to get lost in there."

"Do as he says," Octavian said, nodding over at the Cleric before he stepped over the lowered wall and into the forest. "Stay where you are until I've checked the rad levels."

"Uh… Doctor?" Amy asked, looking at him as another thought occurred to her. "If these are _trees_ … how do they survive on a spaceship?"

"Oh, they're more than trees, Pond; you're going to _love_ this," the Doctor said, walking up to the nearest tree and moving a section of peat moss aside to reveal circuitry running along the bark. "They're treeborgs; trees plus technology! Branches become cables, which become sensors linked to the hull; a whole forest, sucking in starlight, breathing out air, even producing rain in its own mini-climate. It's an eco-pod running through the heart of the ship; a forest in a bottle, on a space ship, in a maze. Have I impressed you yet, Amy Pond?"

"You can say that again…" Amy said, grinning in amazement at the sight before her, the trees extending upwards to connect to various glowing cables leading to a roof far above them…

Even after all those years of lessons from the Doctor, the universe could still produce some fascinating twists…

"Doctor!" Octavian called over. "There's an exit, far end of the ship, into the Primary Flight Deck."

"Good," the Doctor said. "That's where we need to go."

"Plotting a safe path…" Octavian said, briefly acknowledging the Doctor before returning his attention to the matter at hand.

"Quick as you like!" the Doctor said, smiling at him.

" _Doctor_?" a voice suddenly said over the radio. " _Excuse me. Hello, Doctor? Angel Bob here, sir_."

"Ah, there you are, Angel Bob," the Doctor said, as he casually sat down in what appeared to be the command chair. "How's life- sorry; bad subject."

" _The Angels are wondering what you hope to achieve_ ," the voice asked.

"Achieve?" the Doctor repeated. "We're not achieving anything. We're just hanging. It's nice in here, consoles, comfy chairs, a forest. How's things with you?"

" _The Angels are feasting, sir_ ," the thing using a dead man's voice replied. " _Soon we will be able to absorb enough power to consume this vessel, this world, and all the stars and worlds beyond_."

"Well, we've got comfy chairs, did I mention?" the Doctor countered.

" _We have no need of comfy chairs_ ," the Angel said.

"I made him say comfy chairs!" the Doctor said, grinning as he glanced back at Amy before continuing his conversation. "OK, well, enough chat. Here's what I want to know; aside from this ship's power to give your fellows a wake-up call, what are you actually after here?"

" _We shall take all of you_ ," the Angel said. " _We shall have dominion over all time and space_."

"Get a life, Bob; oops, sorry again," the Doctor said, briefly grinning at the joke before he continued talking. "There's power on this ship but nowhere near that much."

" _With respect, sir_ ," Angel Bob replied, quashing Amy's brief hope that the Angel had just been trying to sound intimidating, " _there is more power on this ship than you yet understand_."

The sound of a strange, horrible screeching filled the room before Amy could ask the Doctor what the Angel might be talking about, a horrific, twisted sound that sounded like twisting metal and a piercing shriek…

"Dear God, what is that?" River asked.

"They're back," Octavian said, grimly studying their surroundings.

" _It's hard to put in your terms, Doctor Song_ ," the voice said from the radio, " _but as best I understand it, the Angels are laughing_."

"Laughing?" the Doctor repeated.

" _Because you haven't noticed it yet_ ," the Angel's voice said.

Turning around to face the door, the Doctor's reply was cut short as he looked at a point up above the door and realised what he was looking at; a crack in the wall, bright light shining through it, in a pattern that he recognised from his first meeting with Amy, all those light-years and centuries ago, in a small bedroom in an English village…

"That's…" Amy said, looking at the crack in confusion.

"Yes, big problem, more immediate matters to worry about; Bishop, get your clerics _moving_!" the Doctor yelled, looking sharply at Octavian even as he pulled out his screwdriver to scan the crack. "Pure Time energy, certainly powerful enough to give the Angels a boost, but where is it _from_ …?"

"Is this _really_ important right now?" Amy asked, glaring at him in exasperation as the Clerics ran past them, River waiting at the entrance to the forest while glaring expectantly at them.

"Just need a moment…" the Doctor said, still staring at the screwdriver as though reading something on it (Amy had to wonder how he did that; did he have some kind of psychic connection to it or something?) before he stepped back and nodded at her. "Right then; after those Clerics!"

As they began to run through the forest, Amy tried not to think about the statues that were rapidly appearing in the control room they'd just abandoned; she had witnessed living shadows that could eat human beings down to the bone in seconds, stopped the Slitheen blowing up her planet to sell it for fuel, and saved the Star Whale from being reduced to a brain-dead state, so she was _not_ going to freak out because they were being chased by statues…


	6. Through the Forest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the episodes that diverged from canon more than I expected; really, you wouldn't believe how many things can be amended simply because I stopped that Angel getting into Amy's eye

After hurrying through the forest as quickly as they could, checking behind themselves to try and spot any approaching Angels- the Doctor had mentioned that the Angels seemed to be occupied 'worshipping' the crack at the moment, but he had also stressed that they shouldn't count on that delaying them for too long- the Doctor finally called a halt when they reached a decently-sized clearing, pausing to give the group a chance to rest.

"So… what _was_ that crack?" Amy asked, looking anxiously at the Doctor.

"The end of the universe," the Doctor said grimly, before he turned to address the Clerics. "Keep an eye on every way into or out of this clearing; I need a moment."

"Doctor, our mission is to make this wreckage safe and neutralise the Angels," Octavian said, looking impatiently at the Time Lord as the Doctor ran around the clearing, seemingly at random, glancing around the trees as though looking for something. "Until that is achieved…"

"Father Octavian," River interjected, glaring over at him, "when the Doctor is in the room, your only mission is to keep him alive long enough to get everyone else home. And trust me, it's not easy-"

"So it's a good thing you were never officially _given_ that responsibility, isn't it, Doctor Song?" the Doctor said, looking firmly at her (Her comment about how he'd needed her when Lux hadn't during that mess with the Library still frustrated him; he'd lasted ten lifetimes without her, and _now_ all of a sudden he had this woman who appeared to think that he was incapable of doing anything without her there to hold his hand?) before he turned back to address the Clerics; issues of River's feelings could wait until they weren't about to be killed by the most dangerous beings in the universe. "Right then, by my calculations, the Primary Flight Deck is a quarter of a mile… _that_ way; if we keep moving, we should get there soon enough, and then I can stabilise the wreck and stop the Angels."

"How?" River asked.

"I'll do a thing," the Doctor said simply.

"What thing?" Amy asked.

"I don't know yet; it's a thing in progress; respect the thing," the Doctor said, sounding very firm despite the vagueness of his statement before he shrugged in resignation. "Anyway, right now we need to focus on getting there first; as it stands, we're surrounded by Angels, exposed everywhere you look, and our only chance to stop them is to get to the main flight deck."

"Understood," Octavian said after a moment's uncertain thought, clearly apprehensive about what they were about to attempt but equally accepting their lack of alternatives. "Clerics, take up defensive positions and prepare to mobilise."

"Doctor," Amy asked, looking anxiously at him, "what about the crack?"

"One thing at a time, Pond," the Doctor said, looking at her with a slight shrug. "I'm working on that issue too, but the Angels are the primary threat right now…"

"Two more incoming," one of the Clerics called out as they began to move.

"Three more over here," another added.

"Keep your eyes on them as long as possible; they're picking up the pace, but they're still waking up," the Doctor said, as the group resumed walking, the Doctor, Amy, River and Octavian in the middle of the small group of soldiers that had been assembled, the soldiers scanning their surroundings anxiously while the Doctor studied River's computer.

"What is it?" River asked, looking curiously at him.

"These cracks…" the Doctor said, shaking his head in frustration. "There's something I'm missing here…"

"Like what caused them?" Amy asked.

"Oh, I'm fairly sure I know _that_ one; I just don't know the specifics," the Doctor said.

"You do?" Amy asked in surprise. "What is it?"

"I'm just guessing here," the Doctor said, his voice lowering as he spoke with Amy, evidently unwilling to share this information with the rest of the group, "but at some point, something is going to explode, in such a temporally massive explosion that even the past and future get cracked."

"Is that possible?" Amy asked, looking uncertainly at the Doctor.

"With reality in the state it's in these days, anything could be possible," the Doctor said grimly, looking back at his companion. "Or have you forgotten what we discussed about the Faction?"

"You mean… how the old rules you enforced don't apply any more?" Amy asked.

"Precisely," the Doctor said, studying the small computer in his hands uncertainly; he'd taken a scan of the crack, but this thing wasn't designed to scan the base code of the universe, and breaking the code down to a level that this thing could process wasn't easy. "Besides, there's a few wider concerns to be considered here…"

"Doctor!" Octavian said, looking impatiently back at the Time Lord; he and Amy had been so caught up in their discussion that they'd started to fall behind the rest of the soldiers. "We have to find that hatch; time is running out-!"

"Time…" the Doctor said, looking up at Octavian in sudden realisation. " _That's it_!"

"What?" Octavian asked.

"Time," the Doctor said. "What if it _could_ run out?"

"What if… time could run out?" River said, looking uncertainly at the Doctor. "Could that happen?"

"Why not?" the Doctor replied, only to be interrupted before he could elaborate when the lights around them suddenly dimmed, a few of the lights behind them suddenly shattering.

"They're taking down the Treeborgs!" one of the Clerics said. "We're losing lights!"

"Just keep moving!" the Doctor yelled impatiently at the soldier. "We can't do anything about the lights now; we have to get to the primary flight deck!"

After walking through the forest for a while longer- Amy wondered if it was always this damp or if the Angels had done something to the environmental controls; if you were going to have a forest in a spaceship, would you want it to be realistic or comfortable?- the group finally reached a wall that looked like the hatch they'd opened to gain access to the forest in the first place, Octavian setting about examining the hatch while the Clerics took up position around him.

"It doesn't open from here, but it's the primary flight deck," Octavian said, after a few moments' examination. "If we can find a service hatch or something…"

"Hurry up and open it!" River said, glancing urgently back at him as she kept her weapon trained on the forest before them. "Time's running out!"

"In more ways than one…" the Doctor said, shaking his head contemplatively as Octavian continued his work.

"Got it!" Octavian said at last, looking up from the small circular glass area in the middle of the hatch.

"Good," the Doctor said, looking back at Octavian with a smile. "Get it open; we'll keep an eye on this-"

"What is that?" one of the Clerics suddenly interrupted, indicating a light beyond the trees that looked like a thicker version of the crack. "It can't be a fire; it's like a… curtain of energy, sort of shifting…"

"The crack…" the Doctor said, eyes widening in horrified understanding as he took in the sight before he looked sharply at the Clerics. " _Don't look at it_!"

"What?" the Cleric said.

"We _can't_ get any closer to it!" the Doctor said, staring anxiously around the group. "Nobody get any closer to that crack!"

"Why not?" Octavian asked.

"Cracks in time, time running out..." the Doctor said, apparently talking half to himself as he reflected on this new turn of events. "No, couldn't be… How is a duck pond a duck pond if there aren't any ducks?"

"The duck pond?" Amy said, looking at him incredulously. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"OK, we know that time can shift," the Doctor continued, looking firmly. "Time can change, Time can be rewritten…"

"What does this have to do with the crack?" Octavian asked.

"It's been happening and I haven't noticed!" the Doctor yelled, hitting his forehead in frustration; Amy wasn't even sure if he'd heard Octavian's question at this point.

"What has?" she asked, even as the Clerics looked sceptically at the Time Lord.

"A massive CyberKing walks over Victorian London and nobody remembers it afterwards?" the Doctor said, now clearly talking to himself. "How could I not see it…?"

Amy thought she remembered the Doctor telling her about that incident- some Cybermen had fled to Victorian London using a stolen Dalek time machine after raiding their archives, but he'd managed to destroy their main ship using their own equipment- but she'd never given that issue much thought until the Doctor brought it up now; even with humanity's apparent inclination to ignore anything alien-related as a hoax, how had something like _that_ happened without tales about it being told in the aftermath…?

"Doctor, we have to move!" Octavian said, looking firmly at him. "The Angels could be here any second!"

"Doctor, he's right," Amy said, looking urgently at her friend; as much as she appreciated his concern, this wasn't the time to think about something like that. "We can't worry about the crack; the Angels are the _immediate_ problem right now!"

The Doctor paused for a moment's thought, and then nodded in acceptance.

"Let's go," he said, turning back to the hatch, crouching down to hurry through it, closely followed by the rest of the team, Octavian bringing up the rear before he sealed the hatch behind him; a quick glance through it confirmed that Angels were gathering around the Treeborgs as they advanced towards the hatch, but the glowing crack struck Amy as a more immediate concern right now. This console room at least appeared to be in better condition than the secondary one, but as far as Amy could tell nothing seemed to be immediately active, the Doctor's grim expression as he looked over the various consoles doing little to improve her hopes…

"All right," the Time Lord said, looking up at the assembled Clerics. "Everything here _seems_ to be in working condition, but we're still running low on power; good thing we're all here already, so I don't need to worry about reactivating the teleport or anything like that…"

"What about the Angels?" Octavian asked.

"And the crack?" Amy added. "What do we do about that?"

"And what will it do to us if we come in contact with it?" River asked.

"Undoes your life," the Doctor said grimly.

"Excuse me?" one of the Clerics asked.

"If the Time Energy catches up with you, you'll never have been born," the Doctor explained, staring solemnly at the surrounding Clerics. "It will erase every moment of your existence; you will _never_ have lived _at all_."

"Oh my God…" River said, staring at the now-sealed hatch.

"That's possible?" Amy asked. "Erasing people from history?"

"My people did it a few times when dealing with particularly dangerous criminals," the Doctor said grimly. "The consequences were… complicated… but that's not relevant right now; what _is_ important is that, if they could do it artificially, a crack in reality like this is certainly capable of doing it as part of its natural cycle."

"Hold on…" River said, looking uncertainly over at the Doctor. "If this is time _energy_ , and the Angels are feeding on it…"

"Maybe they'll drain the crack?" Amy asked hopefully; it might give the Angels power, but if they could dispose of the crack that would let the Doctor focus on one problem at a time…

"They won't," the Doctor said firmly.

"How do you know?" Octavian asked.

"It's too much power," the Doctor said. "You can try and keep yourself warm on a forest fire, but it's going to consume you eventually; the only way to stop it is…"

He paused in thought, a smile spreading across his face as the new thought came to him. "Is to feed it a big complicated space-time event…"

"Like what?" River asked.

" _Like you_ ," the Doctor's radio suddenly said in Bob's hi-jacked voice.

" _What_?" Amy said, staring at the radio in horror before she looked up at the Doctor. "Is that-?"

"True?" the Doctor finished. "Of course it is; I'm the last true Time Lord, remember?"

Amy didn't have the chance to respond to that statement before a loud metallic clang was heard from the hatch, which subsequently rose open once again to reveal a swarm of Angels gathered outside.

"Angel Bob, I assume," the Doctor said, stepping forward to address the Angels as the Clerics raised their weapons around him. "You drained the power from the ship just so we could chat face-to-face?"

"The Time Field is coming," the Angel 'spoke' despite its lips not moving; Amy couldn't tell if it was coming from the radio or the central Angel. "It will destroy our reality."

"Yeah, and look at you, all running away," the Doctor said, his manner unusually grim for the ocular attitude Amy had come to expect from her friend. "What can I do for you?"

"There is a rupture in time," the Angel said. "The Angels calculate that if you throw yourself into it, it will close and they will be saved."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, could do, could do that," the Doctor said. "But why?"

"Your friends would also be saved," the Angel pointed out.

"Well, there is that," the Doctor noted.

Amy couldn't believe the Doctor was even thinking this; the universe was in peril from a twisted alternate version of himself, and he was actually talking about undoing his timeline to save a group of people he'd only just met and a mass of Angels?

Amy might not want to die, but she wasn't going to put herself above everyone the Doctor could help…

"I've travelled in time," River said, walking urgently up to the Doctor. "I'm a complicated space/time event, too; throw me in."

Amy wasn't sure if she should feel jealous at River for making the offer first or relieved that they had an alternative…

"Oh, be serious," the Doctor said dismissively, ending Amy's brief hope that they'd found an alternative. "Compared to me, these Angels are more complicated than you, and it would take every one of them to amount to me, so get a grip."

"Doctor, I can't let you do this," River said.

"No, seriously, get a grip," the Doctor said.

"You're not going to die here!" River said urgently.

"No, I mean it," the Doctor said, his voice rising even as he kept staring at the Angels. "River, Amy, Clerics, get a _grip_."

Amy didn't need River's look of realisation to guess what the Doctor was up to, reaching behind her to grab a railing on a nearby console, the Clerics and River following her example even as they kept their guns trained on the Angels before them.

"Sir," the Angel said, evidently ignorant of the Doctor's plan, "the Angels need you to sacrifice yourself now."

"Thing is, _Bob_ ," the Doctor said, smiling in satisfaction as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver, "the Angels are draining all the power from this ship, every last bit of it, and you know what? I think they've forgotten where they're standing. I _think_ they've forgotten the gravity of the situation. Or to put it another way, Angels… night-night."

With those words, the Doctor aimed the screwdriver at a console and triggered something that turned off the generator controlling the last of the _Byzantium_ 's power supply. As the artificial gravity shut down along with everything else, the entire floor seemed to tilt over onto its side, as what had been the floor suddenly became a massive wall. With nothing to support them and no way to grab onto anything with the Clerics all staring at them, the Angels all fell towards the crack below them, triggering a burst of light that seemed to fill the forest and the flight deck before it all vanished, leaving the Clerics and the three time-travellers hanging over where the crack had been.

"Well," the Doctor said, smiling over at the Clerics. "That was… interesting."

"What was?" Octavian asked, looking at the Doctor in confusion. "Why did you just shut down the power?"

"Pardon?" Amy said, looking in confusion between the Doctor and Octavian. "Didn't he hear-?"

"Non-time-travellers, Pond," the Doctor explained with a smile. "The Angels never existed now, so the Clerics don't remember them; am I right?"

"Angels?" Octavian said. "What Angels?"

"That's… a long story," the Doctor said, looking at Octavian with a brief smile of resignation, before he sighed and indicated their current precarious position. "Can we just focus on getting safely down from here and take it from there?"

* * *

It took a while to get the entire team out of the _Byzantium_ with the gravity deactivated, but they eventually managed to reach the bottom of the ship where they'd entered. With the aid of a few rope-ladders they'd managed to recover from a storage locker on the way down, they were able to descend from the _Byzantium_ back into the now-empty maze of the dead, the team swiftly departing from the maze to head back to the beach.  
  
Octavian and the Clerics were somewhat sceptical of the explanation that they had been helping the Doctor hunt an army of creatures that had just been erased from history, but something about River Song's presence apparently convinced them that they should accept the Doctor's story, particularly when the other Clerics confirmed that they definitely remembered something killing the rest of their team when the Doctor and Amy were both accounted for, even if they couldn't recall what it was. Octavian was still keeping a particularly critical eye on River as she took up position alongside the surviving the Clerics, but he seemed to be willing to accept the Doctor's story and leave it at that.  
  
"Goodbye," the Doctor said, shaking Octavian's hand as he smiled at the older man, taking care to keep his distance from River; she'd been helpful so far, but there were things about her that still rubbed him up the wrong way. "I wish I'd known you better."  
  
"I think, sir, you knew me at my best," Octavian replied with a smile. "And besides, we may meet again, given Doctor Song-"  
  
"I don't want to know," the Doctor said, holding up one hand as he looked firmly at Octavian. "My history with River Song is long and complicated and I'm not even sure where it's going right now; if I don't know by now, I'm not meant to, and things are complicated enough in my life without the potential for more paradoxes."  
  
Octavian simply stared at the Doctor in silence for a moment before he nodded, his expression one of grim understanding as he turned away from the Doctor and walked back to join the Clerics. River raised one hand to give the Doctor a brief wave- the handcuffs she was wearing raised some question-marks, but the Doctor wasn't going to ask about that- before she and the rest of the Clerics vanished as the teleporter swirled up around them, leaving the Doctor and Amy alone on the beach.  
  
"So…" Amy asked, looking uncertainly at the Doctor. "Who's River Song?"  
  
"I don't know," the Doctor replied, shaking his head. "I've met her once in her future and my past so far; she… helped me save around four thousand people, and knew some things about me that I can't explain."  
  
"Oh," Amy said, looking at him uncertainly. "Do you trust her?"  
  
"She saved my life in a situation where anyone working for my enemies could have easily left me to die and claimed that they'd just been too late to save me…" the Doctor said, before he shook his head in frustration. "But no, I don't trust her entirely; with the Faction playing such an important role in the universe these days, and considering my continuing status as their primary target, it would be all too easy for them to get me dependent on someone when we interact in a temporally-backwards relationship…"  
  
"Temporally back-? oh, you mean like how you became Merlin?" Amy asked. "You took on the role because you'd already learned that you'd take it on?"  
  
"Precisely," the Doctor said, nodding briefly at Amy before he fell into silent contemplation for a moment, staring at the space where River had been, until he shrugged and looked back at her; without any way of knowing what he could do about the River situation, it would be easier all around if he just moved on. "Anyway, on a more practical note, we've just defeated one of the most dangerous races in the universe, but we've also learned that we're dealing with something powerful enough to fracture time and space and potentially erase everyone caught in the blast radius; still regretting coming along?"  
  
"Are you serious?" Amy asked, grinning back at him. "I saw trees in a spaceship and I've saved the future of Britain; I am _never_ going to regret this!"  
  
"Good to know," the Doctor said, smiling back at her- he hadn't realised just how much he missed having a companion after all those years since his brief time travelling with Jack- before he indicated the TARDIS. "Well, come on then; on to our next port of call."  
  
"Which is?" Amy asked, as she followed the Doctor back to her ship.  
  
"Somewhere quieter and more tourist-y," the Doctor answered. "What are your thoughts on Italy?"


	7. An Anomaly in Venice

As he stepped out of the TARDIS, the Doctor smiled at the sight; if anything could serve as a pleasant alternative to the nightmare that had been the Maze of the Dead and the wreck of the _Byzantium_ , it would be a city like this.

"Venice!" he proclaimed, opening his arms with a broad grin as Amy stepped out of the ship behind him, walking around the port as he reflected on its history. "Venezia! La Serenissima! Impossible city. Preposterous city! Founded by refugees running from Attila the Hun; it was just a collection of little wooden huts in the marsh, but became one of the most powerful cities in the world. Constantly being invaded, constantly flooding... constantly... Just beautiful! Oh, you gotta love Venice. And so many people did. Byron, Napoleon, Casanova…"

He trailed off for a moment remembering his last visit to this city so many years and lifetimes ago- the early days of his travels with Charley, back when he could still ignore the potential temporal risks of her survival, at a point in the city's own future when a twisted couple's attempts to live forever had nearly doomed the city itself- but his train of thought was interrupted as a grey-haired man dressed in black walked up to him.

"Papers, if you please," the man said, in the manner of a business official. "Proof of residency, current bill of medical inspection."

"There you go, fella," the Doctor said, holding up his psychic paper nonchalantly. "All to your satisfaction, I think you'll find."

"I am so sorry, your Holiness," the man said, bowing deeply at him. "I didn't realise."

"No worries," the Doctor said, retrieving the paper. "You were just doing your job… sorry, what exactly _is_ your job?"

"Checking for aliens," the man explained. "Visitors from foreign lands what might bring the plague with them."

"Plague?" Amy repeated, walking up behind the Doctor to look at him incredulously. "You brought us here during a _plague_?"

"Don't worry, Viscountess," the man in black said, bowing in her direction as he indicated a crest on a book he was carrying. "No, we're under quarantine here, no-one comes in, no-one goes out, and all because of the grace and wisdom of our patron, Signora Rosanna Calvierri."

"Interesting…" the Doctor said contemplatively. "I heard the plague died out years ago."

"Not out there," the man said, indicating the sea behind them. "No, Signora Calvierri has seen it with her own eyes. Streets are piled high with bodies, she said."

"Did she, now?" the Doctor said, nodding thoughtfully as he walked off down another street, followed closely by Amy.

"I take it that isn't part of history?" she asked.

"As I said, the plague should have died out by now," the Doctor explained grimly. "If it was still active, I would have detected the temporal distortion no matter what anyone did to hide it; the fact that there isn't anything yet suggests that the plague doesn't exist, but that does raise questions about what this 'Signoria Calvierri' is up to…"

His contemplation trailed off as they watched a group of women in white dresses and veils walking along a square towards a large building led by an older woman in a purple dress, the crest above the door recognisable from the box the official had shown them earlier. As they watched, a man ran up to the women and began to lift the veils, calling out to someone called 'Isabella'- most likely a daughter, judging by the youth of the women present- despite the older woman's protests, only to be thrown away when he apparently found his daughter by the other girls. The Doctor thought he caught a glimpse of something in one of the girl's mouths when they advanced, but it was hard to be sure at this distance, particularly when his attention shifted back to the man when a young man in purple and gold stepped on his chest, keeping the other man down while the girls walked into the building.

"What was _that_ about?" Amy asked, looking at the Doctor in confusion as the man was dragged away by two guards.

"I don't know," the Doctor said, staring thoughtfully after the man the guards had dragged away before he turned to look at Amy. "Shall we find out?"

The Time Lord didn't give Amy a chance to respond before he was hurrying after the man, leaving her to hurry after him, allowing herself a slight smile at the thought of what might be awaiting them.

Maybe it was strange to be more enthusiastic about the possibility of an interesting investigation into something strange than the possibility of a good holiday, but Amy wasn't going to analyse that right now; the Doctor had a mission, and all she had to do for the moment was keep up with him until he was ready to explain it.

After a few moments of hurried walking, they found the man they'd witnessed in front of the school, walking solemnly down an alley street.

"Who were those girls?" the Doctor asked, leaping onto the bottom step of a stairway to look curiously at the dejected man.

"I thought everyone knew about the Calvierri school," the man said, looking inquiringly back at the Doctor as Amy walked up to join her friend.

"First day here," the Doctor said, indicating himself and Amy as he walked down from the step and walked up to the man. "Parents will do all sorts of things to get their children into good schools; move house, change religion… so why are you trying to get her out?"

"Something happens in there," the man said, his tone grim as he looked at the two of them. "Something magical, something evil. My own daughter didn't recognise me. And the girl who pushed me away, her face... like an animal."

"Oh god…" Amy said, reaching over to place a sympathetic hand on the man's shoulder. "I'm… I'm sorry…"

"Me too," the Doctor said, nodding thoughtfully at the other man before he looked back at the school. "I think it's time I had a word with Signora Calvierri…"

"Meaning that we're going to sneak into the school?" Amy asked.

"Nope," the Doctor said, shaking his head as he looked at Amy. " _I'm_ going to sneak into the school; you're going to go with…"

"Guido," the man they had been talking to said, realising that the Doctor was looking at him.

"You're going to go with Guido here and wait for me by the TARDIS while I see what I can find out with a quick nose around," the Doctor said, nodding firmly at Amy before he turned and hurried back to the school, leaving Amy with nothing else to do but look at their new apparent friend and shrug.

"He… does that a lot," she said, smiling awkwardly at the older man. "So… I'm Amy; who are you?"

* * *

The Doctor wasn't sure if he should be disappointed or not at how comparatively easy it was to sneak into this place; it was always nice when he didn't have to worry about evading death-traps or the like while breaking into places, but at the same time it left him wondering if there was actually anything worth breaking in to look at in the first place. Having sneaked into a side-gate after using a couple of firecrackers he'd found in his pockets to create a distraction that would draw the guards away, the Doctor had used the sonic to enter a side-gate and then hurried down a flight of steps into a small underground chamber, which initially revealed nothing of interest but other doors and a mirror.  
  
For a moment, the Doctor paused to examine the mirror and check his appearance- it had taken a while, but he was really starting to get used to this face- but his assessment was interrupted when he heard a series of voices simultaneously asking him who he was. Turning around, he found that he was surrounded by a group of girls wearing simple white dresses- most likely the 'students' he'd seen earlier- a glance back at the mirror confirming that he was the only person here casting a reflection.  
  
"How are you doing that?" he said, looking back and forth between the mirror and the girls; the obvious implication didn't quite fit, but this was still something to marvel at. "I… am… loving it; you're like Houdini, only five scary girls, only he was shorter- _will be_ shorter, and I'm rambling…"  
  
"I'll ask you again, signor," the girls all said simultaneously. "Who are you?"  
  
"Why don't you check _this_ out?" the Doctor said, pulling out a leather wallet and opening it to show them the contents, only to realise after he'd done so that he'd pulled out the wrong wallet; this was his first self's old library card.  
  
Honestly, he needed to clean out his dimensional pockets at some point; he lucked out most of the time when he was looking for things, and it came in handy when he was being put into prison and was instructed to turn out his pockets, but then there were moments like these…  
  
"So," he said, putting the card away and trying to regain some degree of dignity, "whatever you are, why shut down the city? Unless…"  
  
"Leave now, signor," the girls continued, "or we shall call for the steward... if you are lucky."  
  
"Really?" the Doctor replied, only to be met with loud hisses as the girls suddenly opened their mouths to reveal very large teeth.  
  
On the one hand, the Doctor could now be fairly sure that they weren't vampires- every vampire he'd encountered in the past had much neater fangs than that- but that didn't tell him what they were as he hurried towards the door leading back to the stairs…  
  
"Tell me the whole plan!" he yelled as he impulsively turned back to face the girls, only to be met with nothing but further hisses.  
  
"One day that'll work…" he mused, turning back to the stairs before looking back at the girls with a mile. "Listen, I would love to stay here- I mean, this whole thing, I'm thrilled; this is _Christmas_ \- but I really have to go and meet my friends…"  
  
With that said, he hurried up the stairs and out of the school, dashing through some of the city's side alleys and busier crowds to throw off any possibility of pursuit as he kept on moving.  
  
Whatever they were up against was clearly a non-human with a plan of some sort, but that didn't explain why it wasn't _quite_ a vampire…

* * *

"So… we're dealing with… faux vampires?" Amy said, as she and the Doctor sat in the house belonging to their new friend Guido after the Doctor had rendezvoused with the two of them back at the TARDIS; for the moment, the Doctor felt that it was more important not to shake up Guido's perspective on the world any more than they had to.  
  
"Essentially, yes," the Doctor said. "I don't know what they are yet, but they don't quite tick all the boxes to be vampires…"  
  
He shook his head and looked at them both with renewed resolve. "Anyway, that's an issue for later; if we're going to get a clearer idea what we're dealing with, I need to get a discreet look at the interior without getting caught en route…"  
  
"Allow me," Guido said, producing a map and laying it across the table, the map clearly displaying Venice's streets and waterways.  
  
"As you saw, there's no clear way in; the House of Calvierri is like a fortress," the native Venetian explained, tracing a line across the man with his fingers. "But there's a tunnel underneath it, with a ladder and shaft that leads up into the house. I tried to get in once myself, but I hit a trapdoor."  
  
"So… we need someone on the inside?" Amy said, smiling at the thought.  
  
"Hold on-" the Doctor began.  
  
"Look, I know it's a risk, but what other choice do we have?" Amy asked.  
  
"There is another option," Guido said, indicating a large set of barrels piled up in one corner of the room. "I work at the Arsenale. We build the warships for the navy."  
  
"Gunpowder?" the Doctor said, leaning over to sniff the barrels, smiling briefly at Guido. "Look, I applaud your resolve, but I have… _issues_ with guns and huge quantities of explosives…"  
  
"What do you suggest, then?" Guido asked. "We wait until they turn her into an animal?"  
  
Stuck for anything he could really say to that as Guido turned away to resume poking at the fire, the Doctor turned back to look at Amy in grim resignation.  
  
"Look, it's all perfectly simple," Amy said, evidently sensing that he was at least open to hearing her plan. "I pretend I'm an applicant, let you in via that trapdoor after everyone else is asleep for the night, you poke around a bit to work out what we're really dealing with, and then we get out." As the Doctor opened his mouth to protest, Amy held up a hand to stop him. "And before you say anything about how they'll recognise you, you've got those flesh-mask things in that room I found in the TARDIS; I know you don't like them, but it's not like anyone's going to recognise James Stewart here, are they?"  
  
Having exhausted all potential protests that he could make at this time, the Doctor simply nodded in resignation while trying not to consider the question that troubled him the most right now.  
  
Considering the Time Lords' complicated history with real vampires… as well as his own assorted close encounters with them- Ruath, Hex's mother, Harris- was someone encouraging these things to create the illusion of vampires to put him off-guard?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone worrying that I'm sticking to the broadcast schedule, I can assure you that I'll be using a VERY different storyline for the Doctor and Amy's next adventure once this crisis is resolved, and I have some original storylines in the pipeline as well; I'm just not at the right point to introduce the originals yet.  
> If anyone wants to know who the Doctor was thinking about in those last moments, Ruath was a Time Lady who nearly left Gallifrey with the Doctor and went on to become a vampire because she believed that Rassilon had become one himself in the novel "Goth Opera", Thomas Hector 'Hex' Schofield was a nurse who became a companion of the Seventh Doctor in the audio series- the Sixth Doctor having met his mother when she was turned into a vampire and failing to save her despite his best efforts- and Harris was a vampire geneticist who was restored to humanity due to her interaction with the Eighth Doctor in the novel "Vampire Science".


	8. Confronting the Calvierris

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this goes down well; Amy's confrontation with Signora Calvierri was trickier to adapt than I expected (For the record, the Doctor's efforts to sneak into the school via the lower passageways worked out the same as in canon, apart from the obvious detail that he wasn't accompanied by Rory)

As it turned out, getting Amy into the school had been relatively straightforward; the Doctor might not have enjoyed wearing the mask, regarding that kind of deceit as more of the Master's line than his own (Amy had never met that guy, but she _really_ didn't like what she'd heard of him through the Doctor's stories; trying to steal his friend's lives because he'd been careless with his own?) but the Calvierris had been all too willing to accept Amy's 'application', even if Lady Calvierri's interest in the psychic paper raised a few question-marks Amy wasn't sure she'd appreciate learning the answers to…

Still, making allowances for the time that she was in at the moment, the room was actually rather good; it might not be a solo room, considering that she was sharing it with at least five other girls, but the beds were remarkably comfortable, and the room itself was fairly spacious (Even if the domed roof was a bit _too_ high for her tastes).

"There are clothes on the bed," the man who'd shown her to the room said. "Get changed and wait here."

"This is private education, then?" she said, staring up at the ceiling as the man in black left, followed by most of the other girls in the room, except for one dark-skinned girl still sitting on her bed that Amy moved to sit beside.

"Hey," she said. "Hello. I'm Amy. What's your name?"

"Isabella," the girl replied, which at least confirmed her relationship with Guido beyond the resemblance, even if she continued to stare at the wall rather that Amy.

"Listen," Amy said, moving over to Isabella as a door slammed shut outside the room, "we're going to get you out of here, but I need you to tell me what's going on. What is this place? What are they doing?"

"They…" Isabella said, her voice trembling as she spoke, "they come at night. They gather around my bed and they take me to a room... with this green light and a chair with... with straps, as if for a surgeon."

"What happens in there?" Amy asked.

"I wake up here," Isabella said, shaking her head in confused terror. "And the sunlight burns my skin like candle wax."

As a bell tolled, Amy looked warily around the room, making sure that there was nothing that could have been used as a secret observation area, before she got to her feet.

"Where's the room?" she asked.

She was fairly sure that she still had a couple of hours to go until the Doctor was in a position to break into the school; until then, she had a chance to get a better picture of what they were up to here, and she was going to take it.

Taking in Isabella's directions as she changed into the clothes offered- hopefully the white dress would help her look inconspicuous- Amy took a lamp from the walls and left the room, giving Isabell a brief reassurance that she would be back for the other girl before departing. Trying to ignore the sound of the moans and cries she was hearing as she walked through the school's corridors- diving in to try and save someone when she didn't know what she was upa against could be dangerous, but if she learned what they were dealing with she could save everyone- she continued towards the school's basement until she found herself near a door that would lead to the courtyard.

For a moment she thought about continuing on towards the room, but quickly changed her mind; the Doctor might trust her to handle things on her own, but she wasn't going to do anyone any favours if she found herself facing pseudo-vampires without a Time Lord to assist her. Walking into the courtyard, she quickly removed the bar locking the grate over the well before she picked up the lamp once again, only to find herself facing the man in black who'd shown her to her bedroom.

[Amy drops her lamp; Carlo drags Amy through the corridors into the room]

"Control yourself, child!" the man said, his tone expressing disdain as he dragged Amy down the stairs.

"Get your hands off me!" Amy retorted, as she was forced into what had to be the room that Isabella had described, illuminated with green light as Signora Calvierri and various other girls stood around the chamber.

"Psychic paper," Signoa Calvierri said as the room's green light became brighter, her tone matching the man's disdain. "Did you really think that would work on me?"

"You know about that, then?" Amy asked, trying not to reveal just how scared she was at this turn of events.

"Where are you from?" Signora Calvierri asked, pacing around him angrily. "Did you fall through the cracks?"

"Mother, this is pointless," the man in the purple cloak said. "Let's just start the process."

"Hold your tongue, Francesco!" Signora Calvierri said, as two of the girls moved an elaborate wooden chair into the middle of the room. "I need to know what this girl is doing in a world of savages with psychic paper!"

Looking at the chair, Amy wasn't sure if she should be relieved that it seemed fairly basic in design; she was increasingly sure that she was dealing with something non-human, but so far she hadn't seen any advanced technology to suggest that these aliens were something other than vampires…

"Who are you with?" Signora Calvierri asked, glaring at Amy as an IV was attached to the chair. "What are you doing in _my_ school?"

"There are a few interesting answers to that," Amy retorted, glaring back at the woman as she was forced into the chair, the other girls strapping her arms and legs down despite her struggles. "Hey; get your hands _off_ me-!"

"Make sport of me, would you?" the Signora asked, looking mockingly at Amy. "Tease me as if I were your dog? Well, this dog has a bite, girl."

Amy briefly thought about trying to protest that she had only been carrying out an investigation rather than treating them like a game, but as the older woman bared what looked remarkably like fangs and lunged forward to bite into her neck, protests were forgotten as agony filled her body. For a moment, Amy could only scream as she felt something being pulled from her, her body feeling drained and exhausted the longer the woman remained at her neck…

Even when Signora Calvierri pulled away from her, Amy took a few moments to register what was happening around her, only peripherally aware of the girls leaving the room and the man in the purple robe saying something about him being thirsty as well, which naturally did little to make her feel better.

The Doctor had been _sure_ that these things weren't vampires… but why were they drinking blood…?

"This is how it works," Signora Calvierri said, leaning over her and giving Amy something new to focus on. "First, we drink you until you're dry. Then... we fill you with our blood. It rages through you like a fire, changing you, until one morning you awake and your humanity is a dream... now faded."

"Or you die," the younger man in the cloak added, reaching out to touch her neck. "That can happen."

"And if I survive?" Amy asked, already certain that she wouldn't like it.

"Then there are ten thousand husbands waiting for you in the water," Signora Calvierri said.

"Yeah, sorry," Amy said, glaring at the woman; she'd never have said half of this in the Doctor's presence, but it was the truth. "I already like someone, and I'm _pretty_ sure I'm not _that_ invested in swimming."

Partly to strike back and partly to take her mind off that depressing train of thought, Amy kicked out at Signora Calvierri, striking something mechanical that cracked under her foot. The man in purple stopped her from doing anything further, but Amy was still able to watch as Signora Calvierri's entire appearance seemed to change right in front of her, the woman adjusting some kind of device at her side that briefly turned her into a creature that Amy could only compare to a giant insect with the head of a piranha, before a shimmer like a TV screen suffering from static restored the original appearance.

Amy was spared from determining what to say next by the sound of footsteps and voices coming from above and upstairs. As the two things- they definitely weren't human, and they were so alien-looking that Amy wasn't entirely certain whether she should think of them as people as they probably thought _really_ differently to her- ran up the stairs, Amy tried to get out of the straps holding her to the chair, but even her best efforts seemed to be fruitless until another pair of hands suddenly began to undo the straps. Momentarily shocked at the new arrival, Amy relaxed as she realised that it was only Isabella; she might be confused at what was happening here, but at least she could be fairly sure that Isabella was still human enough to be on her side.

"Thanks," she said, deciding to focus on the essential points as she stood up. "Let's go!"

Taking Isabella by the hand, Amy ran out of the chamber and back up the stairs towards the footsteps she'd heard earlier. She grinned in relief as she saw the Doctor standing in the corridor brandishing a long torch, only for the smile to falter as she took in his opponents; Signora Calvierri and the two men approached him from one side while five girls that she recognised as other students came along the other end.

"Doctor!" she yelled, just as he thrust the torch at the girls, forcing them rapidly back.

"Amy!" he yelled, turning to look at her with a broad grin.

"Quickly, through here!" Isabella yelled, turning around to lead the Doctor and Amy back the way she had just come, hurrying along the corridor and past the room until they reached a downwards flight of stairs

"They're not vampires!" Amy hurriedly told the Doctor as he closed the door behind them.

"We already knew that!" the Time Lord replied, using the sonic to seal the door against their pursuers.

"But we _didn't_ know that they're some kind of bug-fish thing, did we?" Amy smiled triumphantly. "I think they're using some kind of disguise projection thing to stop us seeing what they really are!"

"Ah, the old ones are always best!" the Doctor said, grinning as they ran from the door, its wood beginning to fracture under the strain that it was being subjected to from the other side. As they reached the passage at the bottom of the stairs, the man in purple appeared before them, but the Doctor pulled out some kind of glowing blue rod thing and their opponent hesitated long enough for the Time Lord to wave Amy and Isabella past. As they finally reached a door, Amy smiled in relief as they opened it to see Guido waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs.

"Quickly; get out!" Isabella yelled, waving the Doctor and Amy out of the door, only to suddenly step back as the sunlight reached her. The Doctor turned back to try and reach her, but Isabella was grabbed by the other vampire girls and dragged back into the school before the Doctor could reach her. As the door slammed shut in front of him, the Doctor tried to break it down, but was swiftly thrown back by a powerful electrical shock, leaving him lying stunned on the ground as Amy hurried to help him to his feet.

They had done their best, but they'd failed to rescue Isabella, and Guido clearly knew that the chances of seeing his daughter again after what had just taken place were virtually non-existent…

Amy had to remind herself that life with the Doctor was always a double-edged sword; it was great when she had the chance to help people, but it sucked when they tried their best and _still_ couldn't do anything.

* * *

Sneaking back into the school hadn't been as difficult as it had been during the previous night; with the well entrance virtually undefended now that the courtyard was fully illuminated by the sunlight, all the Doctor had to do was retrace his steps and travel back through the well. Amy had wanted to come with him, but the Doctor wanted to give her time to recover after her strange experience; this kind of infiltration was best handled as a solo operation.  
  
Amy's time in the school might have failed as far as rescuing Isabella was concerned, but they had come away with a clearer idea of what they were up against, particularly thanks to Amy's description; all the Doctor needed now was to determine what Signora Calvierri was actually trying to accomplish with all this effort…  
  
As he settled into Signora Calvierri's throne, he smiled slightly as the woman in question walked into the room, giving her a slightly amused wolf whistle as he took her in.  
  
"Long way from Saturnyne, aren't you... Sister of the Water?" he asked; he'd never been to the planet himself, but Amy's description of the natives when she'd made it to safety had been very distinctive.  
  
"No… let me guess," Signori Calvierri said, looking thoughtfully at him. "The owner of the psychic paper. Then I take it you're a refugee, like me?"  
  
"I'll make you a deal; an answer for an answer," the Doctor replied, unwilling to reveal that he could leave Earth until he knew what she was up to. "You're using a perception filter; it doesn't change your features, but manipulates the brainwaves of the person looking at you. But seeing one of you for the first time in, say, a mirror, the brain doesn't know what to fill the gap with, so leaves it blank... hence no reflection."  
  
"Your question?" Signori Calvierri asked.  
  
"Why can we see your big teeth?" the Doctor responded, cutting to the chase.  
  
"Self-preservation overrides the mirage," the woman explained with a slight laugh. "The subconscious perceives the threat and tries to alert the conscious brain."  
  
"Where's Isabella?" the Doctor asked, noting the logic of that explanation.  
  
"My turn," the woman asked, ignoring his question. "Where are you from?"  
  
"Gallifrey," the Doctor replied, testing the other alien's response; the amused smile and slight edge of awe at least suggested that she didn't regard him as an automatic enemy, so the Faction probably _weren't_ involved…  
  
"You should be in a museum," Signora Calvierri said. "Or in a mausoleum."  
  
"Why are you here?" the Doctor asked; he wasn't going to respond to any questions she might have about his survival, and asking about Isabella would have to wait until he had worked out what the Saturnyns were doing here.  
  
"We ran from the silence," Signora Calvierri said. "Why are you here?"  
  
"Holiday," the Doctor responded briefly. "The silence?"  
  
"There were cracks," Signori Calvierri said, her tone solemn and her earlier smile faded as she spoke. "Some were tiny... some were as big as the sky. Through some we saw worlds and people, and through others we saw silence... and the end of all things. With the guidance of the one-armed man, we fled to an ocean like ours and the crack snapped shut behind us... and Saturnyne was lost."  
  
"So Earth is to become Saturnyne II?" the Doctor asked, privately noting the reference to the one-armed man; if that wasn't the Grandfather trying to create a difficult situation for him, he'd be _very_ surprised…  
  
"And you can help me," the woman said, looking earnestly at him. "We can build a new society here, as others have. What do you say?"  
  
"Mmm…" the Doctor said, his expression thoughtful as he stood up from the throne and walked up to face the woman; he wasn't going to help her rebuild on Earth, and he couldn't risk her learning about the TARDIS in case she tried to use it to facilitate her plan, but there might be other options…  
  
"Where's Isabella?" he asked.  
  
"Isabella?" Signori Calvierri asked, looking at him in obvious confusion.  
  
"The girl who saved my friend," the Doctor clarified, his thoughts on this woman immediately lowered as he took in her complete lack of recognition of the name; she'd been about to make Isabella one of her own, and she couldn't even remember her name.  
  
"Oh, deserters must be executed; any general will tell you that," Signori Calvierri said.  
  
The Doctor wasn't sure what made him sicker; the idea that she considered herself at war with a world that wasn't equipped to face her, the concept that she thought of the girls as willing recruits rather than forced additions, or the idea that she considered execution a suitable punishment for desertion…  
  
No.  
  
What made him really sick was the fact that she had condemned someone to death this _morning_ and couldn't even be bothered to remember her name.  
  
"I need an answer, Doctor," Signori Calvierri said, clearly unaware of his thoughts. "A partnership; any which way you choose."  
  
"I don't think that's such a good idea, do you?" the Doctor said, keeping his voice low to restrain the urge to shout. "I'm a Time Lord. You're a big fish. Think of the children."  
  
"Carlo!" Signora Calvierri said, turning away from him to call for the man in black before she glared at him. "You're right; we're nothing alike. I would bend the heavens to save my race-"  
  
"And I know that there are some goals that are not worth the actions you would have to commit to achieve them," the Doctor countered, dismissing the man in black's attempt to force him out with a firm glare at the other man before he focused his attention back on Signori Calvierri. "Before this day is done, I will tear down the house of Calvierri stone by stone."  
  
With that statement, he turned to walk towards the doors to the room, only to pause as he decided to say one last thing.  
  
"And you know why?" he asked. "You didn't know Isabella's name."  
  
The neutral expression that Signori Calvierri directed back at him as he departed was more than enough to confirm that he'd made the right call; her complete lack of attention or recollection of someone she'd tried to convert made it clear that she cared nothing for the individuals who were part of her entire plan.  
  
He needed to work out what she was going to do and what role the Faction had to play in everything as soon as possible, or Venice was going to be in serious trouble…


	9. The Two Falls

Back in Guido's house, the Doctor used the sonic screwdriver to take a quick scan of the bite-marks on Amy's neck before he sat down at the table, his brain focused on the task at hand; he now knew what he was up against and what they were after, but he just didn't know _how_ they were going to do it…

Ignoring Amy's comment about their underwater nature explaining their hatred of the sun or Guido's suggestion that they take the fight to the school, the Doctor sat in silence for a moment at the table in Guido's apartment before he continued speaking.

"All right," he said at last (He'd worry about the Faction's role in this later). "Here's what we know; her planet dies, so they flee through a crack in space and time, and end up here, then she closes off the city and, one by one, changes people into creatures like her to start a new gene pool. Got it. Then what? They come from the sea, they can't survive forever on land, so what's she going to do…? Unless she's going to do something to the environment to make the city habitable…"

He trailed off for a moment in contemplation before he realised the answer to that question. "She said 'I shall bend the heavens to save my race'… 'bend the heavens'… she's going to sink Venice."

"She… she's going to sink Venice?" Guido asked, staring at the Doctor in shock.

"And repopulate it with the girls she's transformed," the Doctor noted.

"Which is where the men come in…" Amy said, in dawning realisation.

"Men?" the Doctor repeated, looking over at his companion.

"When I was in the chair, she told me that there were ten thousand husbands waiting for me in the water," Amy explained.

"Only the male offspring survived the journey here," the Doctor noted, Amy's information providing further pieces to this puzzle. "She's left the majority of them in the canal, waiting to make some compatible girlfriends…"

He shuddered slightly at the imagery; forced genetic transformation was one of the most disturbing things he'd ever dealt with, and he took it personally ever since that mess in Spain where he'd had to save himself from being turned into an Androgum. "I mean, I've been around a lot, but really… that's… ew."

Further conversation was cut off by the sound of something clattering on the floor above them, prompting all three to glance at the ceiling. The Doctor didn't need to hear Guido confirm that there weren't any people upstairs to know that things were about to become dangerous, pulling out his ultraviolet light once more as the converted girls entered the room and appeared in front of the window. Positioning himself in front of Guido and Amy, the Doctor used the light to hold them back before running a quick scan with the screwdriver, the same scan deactivating whatever disguise they were using to reveal their Saturnyne forms.

"What's happened to them?" Guido asked, staring at the creatures in horror.

"There's nothing left of them; they've been fully converted," the Doctor said (His initial thought of another joke was dismissed; this wasn't the time to comment on their other 'assets'). "Move; come on!"

"Give me the lamp!" Guido suddenly yelled, grabbing the Doctor's ultraviolet light and holding it in front of him as the girls followed them. Reaching the door to the outside, the Doctor and Amy hurried out, only to turn around and see Guido simply standing in the entrance.

"Stay away from the door, Doctor," the native Venetian said before closing the door, the sound of a key being turned confirming that it was now locked.

"No!" the Doctor yelled, pounding desperately on the door. "Guido! What are you doing?"

He knew what his friend intended, but he couldn't accept it; there _had_ to be another way to stop the girls, even if they'd never be human again…

No matter how hard he tried to attract Guido's attention or break through the lock- that was the problem with low-tech methods; so simple to set up that more elaborate subtle tools like his screwdriver were never designed to compensate for them and he could never get around to making the necessary changes- he already knew that he wasn't going to get through the door in time…

Finally, with nothing else to do and aware that Guido must at least be close to his destination by now, the Doctor turned around, grabbed Amy by the shoulders, and ran from the house, just in time to escape the worst of the blast as the gunpowder inside the house exploded, destroying the building and anyone in it.

It might be a primitive explosive by most standards, but like with the door, that just made it more reliable rather than less; nobody was going to walk away from that amount of gunpowder blowing up in their face.

"Oh God…" Amy said, staring at the burning house in horror. "He… he sacrificed himself for us…"

"I know," the Doctor said, reaching over to give Amy a comforting hug.

Witnessing death was always difficult, but this was the first time when Amy had seen someone die simply to save the two of them; every death she'd experienced before now had been either their enemies or simply caught in the crossfire, but Guido had a chance to escape and sacrificed it to stop their enemies and save them…

The sight of the sky darkening and thunder and lightning emerging from a previously cloudless sky forced the Doctor's thoughts away from Guido's sacrifice and back to the matter at hand; when dealing with a plan to sink a city, sudden rainclouds from nothing were a definite sign that things weren't going to be easy.

"Rosanna's initiating the final phase," he said, looking grimly up at the sky.

"We need to stop her-!" Amy began.

" _I_ need to stop her," the Doctor corrected, looking firmly at Amy. "Get back to the TARDIS; I can handle Rosanna on my own."

It might be unnecessarily harsh, but he had to focus on the immediate issue right now; he might be able to stop the Saturnyne plan if he was quick; but after Amy's recent close encounter with Signora Calvierri, he wasn't going to put her anywhere near the danger unless he had to.

With Amy heading back towards the TARDIS, the Doctor was left to hurry through the streets of Venice as the city's residents began to panic around them, focused on the smoke and vapour rising from the school's bell-tower while trying not to think about the panic in the streets.

As much as he wanted to help the people, if he didn't take action to stop Signora Calvierri's plan, there wasn't going to a Venice for these people to live in…

* * *

As she ran through the streets of Venice, Amy tried not to think too much about the scale of the disaster happening around her; the Doctor was targeting the source of the disaster, and with the sky seemingly boiling above her, there really wasn't much else that she could do but to get to safety…  
  
Unfortunately, her attempt to escape was swiftly interrupted by the man in purple who had earlier been identified as Franceso, teeth bared as he looked at her from the other side of the alley. Stuck for ideas, Amy grabbed a pair of candlesticks as improvised weapons, striking Franceso in the head and sending him reeling. As Franceso drew his sword while trying to collect himself, Amy hurried down another alley and up a nearby flight of stairs before pulled out her pocket mirror, holding it at just the right angle to focus the sunlight above them onto the disguised fish-man. As his disguise unit shorted out, Francesco screamed as he returned to his fish-form before exploding into ash.  
  
"Huh," Amy said, looking at the pile of ash that had been her enemy with a slight smile. "That was easy."  
  
She wasn't going to think about the fact that she'd just killed someone until she had to; he'd been an insane fish-person trying to destroy Venice who'd been trying to kill her first.  
  
What mattered right now was the fact that the Doctor was going to be facing more of those creatures on his own; she hadn't spent all that time training to be his companion only to get left behind at the crucial moment…

* * *

Charging into the school's 'throne room', the Doctor quickly set to work examining the central chair; considering Signora Calvierri's ego, she'd want to make the seat of her power as easily available as possible. It didn't take long for him to find a hatch that revealed assorted alien circuitry set into the back of the chair, the Doctor going on to examine it with the sonic screwdriver; impressive for the time period, which leant further weight to the idea that the Faction had some role in this by providing the Saturnynes with the necessary parts, but theoretically possible for him to shut down..  
  
"You're too late," Signora Calvierri said, walking into the room with a superior smirk on her face. "Such determination... just to save one city. Hard to believe it's the same man that let an entire race turn to cinders and ash. Now you can watch as my people take their new kingdom."  
  
"The girls have gone, Rosanna," the Doctor said, ignoring that remark about what he'd done to an entire race; he'd gathered enough of a reputation over the years that she could have learned that detail from anywhere.  
  
"You're lying," the woman said, her smile replaced by indignant horror.  
  
"Shouldn't I be dead, mmm?" the Doctor pointed out, taking a moment to appreciate her shock before the woman turned to leave. "You can't do this; there are two hundred thousand people in this city-"  
  
"So save them," Signora Calvierri said, before she left the room once more.  
  
Stuck for anything else to do with the tools at hand, the Doctor made a more thorough assessment of the throne before he confirmed to his satisfaction that he wasn't going to be able to deactivate her equipment from here; the throne controls were clearly only intended to set everything up for the process to start, particularly since Signora Calvierri had never planned on stopping it. Hurrying to a nearby balcony, he took a moment to take in the storm outside- escalating beyond the norm, but still nothing more than bad weather- before hurrying back inside as the bell began to ring, just as Amy entered the room.  
  
"Get out!" the Doctor yelled, waving urgently at his companion. "I need to stabilise the storm!"  
  
"I'm not leaving you!" Amy said, looking urgently at him. "There has to be _something_ we can do!"  
  
The Doctor's response was cut short when the ground shook around them, part of the ceiling collapsing around them.  
  
"What was that?" Amy asked, looking anxiously at him.  
  
"Bit of an earthquake; that happens when you manipulate the elements," the Doctor said, shaking his head in exasperation. "Don't worry about that, however; the concern right now is the tidal waves the earthquakes will _create_."  
  
"And that's _encouraging_?" Amy asked.  
  
"Prioritise, Pond!" the Doctor said, looking firmly at her before he indicated the throne. "Right, Rosanna's throne is the control hub but she's locked the program, so tear out every single wire and circuit in the throne. Go crazy, hit it with a stick, anything; we need it to shut down and re-route control to the secondary hub, which I'm guessing will also be the generator."  
  
Leaving Amy to work on the throne, the Doctor traced the wires from the chair to the ceiling, quickly tracking them from that to a complex device at the base of the school bell-tower, wires coming out of something that resembled a heart with cybernetic attachments (Once again, some elements of the Faction; biodata might be their preference, but they weren't slouches at biological manipulation either).  
  
Having determined that there was nothing he could deactivate down here, the Doctor followed the cables from the device leading up to the top of the bell-tower, trying to ignore the ringing bells as he moved ever closer to the top. Taking a moment to stop the clanging bell- he wasn't going to put up with that assault on his ears if he didn't have to- he grabbed a table leading to the roof and began to climb towards the top of the tower, finally reaching the giant golden sphere at the peak of the tower. Opening it to reveal a clockwork-like system connected to a more elaborate device at the bottom of the device, he anxiously examined the device before his fingers identified a suitable toggle switch, flicking it and turning it off with a smile of relief.  
  
Looking up as the sky began to clear, the Doctor resolved to consider the implications of the device being that easy to turn off later; he'd like to think that Rosanna did it so that she could save the city if she'd changed her mind, but he had his suspicions that the one-armed man had given them this equipment to ensure that the Doctor's choice was as psychologically hard as it had to be…  
  
Looking down, the Doctor gave Amy a broad grin as he saw her staring up at him from the courtyard, taking a moment to revel in the cheers of the other Venetians, but quickly re-focused his attention on the more immediate matter; the equipment might have been dealt with, but that didn't mean that the Saturnyne queen was going to abandon her plans that easily.  
  
Hurrying back down to the ground floor, he quickly headed for the courtyard, and wasn't surprised to witness Signori Calvierri sitting on the edge of the pier, staring at the water before her, her dress and finery discarded to leave her only in a white linen dress like her former students had been wearing.  
  
"Rosanna!" he called to her.  
  
"One city to save an entire species," the woman said, staring at the churning water before her, barely acknowledging his presence. "Was that so much to ask?"  
  
"There were wider concerns," the Doctor said grimly as he walked towards her. "You can't change the past; you can mourn, but you have to move on and live. I know, Rosanna; I did it."  
  
"Tell me, Doctor," Signori Calvierri said, turning to look at him with a firm stare despite the tears gleaming in her eyes. "Can your conscience carry the weight of another dead race?" Remember us. Dream of us."  
  
The Doctor didn't have time to protest before she had turned to dive into the water, triggering a flurry of bubbles as something began to froth under the water, accompanied by eager screams, before it ceased.  
  
He couldn't even bring himself to be that concerned; anything involving the Faction was bad news, and the Saturnynes' presence on Earth at this time would have raised far too many risks to the timestream.  
  
Their loss was a tragedy, but led by someone like Rosanna Calvierri, only the worst of the Saturnynes would have prospered; they would never be satisfied contained to one city, particularly not to 'appease' such a relatively primitive species.  
  
He'd done what he had to do as a Time Lord to preserve history; he just hoped that he could learn how to cope with that as a human being.  
  
Right now, however, with the current crisis resolved, he was going to get back to what he'd originally come here for; after saving the city, he and Amy deserved a genuine vacation for the next couple of days…


	10. Outside the Universe

After the chaos of their arrival, the Doctor and Amy's next few days in Venice were comparatively relaxing. After arranging a funeral for Guido and Isabella once they'd confirmed that the two had no other family in the area, they'd spent some time enjoying the sights of the city, appreciating their relative peace now that the crisis had been resolved.

It had been a difficult crisis in its way, but the Doctor had enjoyed the chance not to think about the Saturnynes' potential support from the Faction. It was worrying, but in the end, the Saturnynes nearly sinking Venice was just another example of the problems that had arisen since the destruction of Gallifrey rather than an example of their usual efforts. The Faction might have ensured that the Saturnynes would go to Earth in particular, but they couldn't take too much action on their own; the Saturnynes were relatively free to interfere in Earth's past as their past wouldn't have been affected if history had been changed, but the Faction were still limited in case they unintentionally paradoxed themselves out of existence, lacking the necessary temporal security systems to fully protect themselves from their more extreme changes.

He just wished that he felt as confident about that as he would have done in the past; the days when the Faction were satisfied to be nothing more than a cult preaching about the pointlessness of life and demonstrating their ability to twist history into minor loops were a thing of the past. He could tell himself that the destruction of Gallifrey had ensured that the Faction would be limited in their influence on the wider universe by depriving them of access to his peoples' technology, but as that mess with the Tractites had proven, even amateurs could get lucky; the Grandfather's knowledge just helped ensure that they wouldn't push the universe to the point. As long as the TARDIS remained out of their grasp, all they had was what the Grandfather could create away from Gallifrey, but the grandfather could do a great deal; after all, anything the Doctor could do could just as easily be achieved by the Grandfather.

The night after they'd left Venice, the Doctor had thought he'd seen a figure in armour standing off to the side in the console room, just out of the corner of his eye, but the moment had passed and he'd dismissed it as mere paranoia; if the Grandfather regained access to the TARDIS, he'd do more than try to taunt him with brief glimpses…

He couldn't get bogged down in that train of thought; as he'd been reminded during that mess with Avalon, so long as he could set his own agenda and think for himself, whatever they attempted to do to his timeline didn't matter while he was here to counter it.

Currently, the Doctor and Amy were enjoying the opportunity to relax in the TARDIS as they discussed some of the Doctor's old journeys; after seeing friends die, the Doctor felt that Amy could do with a reminder of what they were out here to see. He was in the middle of discussing his old quest for the Key to Time and some of his experiences during that search- the robotic parrot had been a rather amusing incident, even if his confrontation with Cessair had been a frustratingly close call- when he was interrupted by what sounded like someone knocking on the TARDIS's door.

"What was that?" Amy asked, looking sharply in the direction of the knock.

"The door," the Doctor said, walking slowly towards the doors. "It knocked."

"But… aren't we in deep space?" Amy asked, looking uncertainly at him as she moved from her position against the console railings.

"Very, very deep," the Doctor confirmed, as the knocking was heard once again, maintaining its original pace. "And somebody's knocking…"

With nothing else to do, the Doctor reached out and opened the door, revealing a small glowing box floating outside the ship, illuminated from inside.

"Oh, come here," the Doctor said, reaching out towards the cube. "Come here, you scrumptious little beauty-!"

As he reached out for the box, just as his hand was in position underneath it, the cube suddenly whizzed past him into the ship, but subsequently zoomed back towards the Time Lord to strike him in the chest, the blow sending the Doctor reeling backwards before he grabbed the box in his hands.

"What is that?" Amy asked, hurrying over to help him to his feet as he stared at the object in his hands.

"I've got mail!" the Doctor said, unable to take his eyes off the box as he stood up, virtually ignoring Amy's hand on his arm. "I've got _mail_ …"

Amy didn't even have time to talk to him about it before her friend had turned to run towards the console, rapidly adjusting controls with one hand as he held the cube in the other.

"It's a Time Lord emergency messaging system; I used it myself to end the War Games," he explained eagerly. "In an emergency, we'd wrap up thoughts in psychic containers and send them through time and space; give them all available information about the danger and request immediate assistance. Anyway, there's a Time Lord out there, and it's one of the good ones!"

"But… you said there weren't any Time Lords left…" Amy asked uncertainly, recalling the tales he'd told her of Gallifrey's destruction.

"There aren't any left in the universe, but the universe isn't where we're going!" the Doctor proclaimed gleefully, tossing the box to Amy as he accelerated his work on the console. "See that snake? The mark of the Corsair. Fantastic bloke; he had that snake as a tattoo in every regeneration. Didn't feel like himself without the tattoo. Or herself, a couple of times. Ooh, she was a bad girl!" (Particularly considering that most Time Lords chose not to regenerate across genders unless they had to for some reason; it was always harder to adjust to a gender other than the one you were born with, which made the Corsair's ability to adapt to such changes an eccentric even by the standards set by other renegades).

With that explanation provided, he adjusted the last setting on the console and set the ship in motion, a brief explosion at the console marking the start of their progress.

"What's happening?" Amy asked, clutching the edge of the console as the TARDIS suddenly shook around them.

"We're leaving the universe!" the Doctor proclaimed gleefully.

"How can you leave the _universe_?" Amy asked.

"With enormous difficulty, particularly when we're trying to go somewhere specific!" the Doctor explained, even as he studied the controls before him; he had better control that Tegan and Nyssa had when they were doing this in the aftermath of his fourth regeneration, but he didn't want to delete anything _too_ important after all the other damage the old girl had sustained over the centuries when he had no easy way to replace damaged components. "Right now I'm burning up TARDIS rooms to give us some welly. Goodbye, swimming pool, goodbye scullery, sayonara, squash court seven!"

As he raced around the console, working as hard as he could to keep the ship on the move without losing his connection to the universe he was leaving behind, the destination finally became obvious, sensors picking up a strange solo planet that could only be where the messenger cube had come from…

Finally, the ship came to a jolting halt, knocking Amy off-balance and forcing the Doctor to duck before the time rotor came to a halt.

"OK… where are we?" Amy asked, looking uncertainly at him.

"Outside the universe," the Doctor said with a grin. "Where we've never, ever been."

His enthusiasm for the chance to explore something new was cut short when the interior lights suddenly dimmed, the power in the TARDIS suddenly draining down to nothing. For a moment, the Doctor thought that he'd lost the connection to the remaining Eye of Harmony fragments, but a quick check confirmed that the link Compassion had created in her last moments remained intact; the power was still getting through, but the TARDIS had no means of processing it…

"Is this meant to be happening?" Amy asked, looking anxiously at him.

"No…" the Doctor said, anxiously studying the controls, trying to find another explanation for what was happening and failing miserably. "Everything's been drained… but that's impossible…"

"Why?" Amy asked. "I thought you told me that the TARDIS drew power fromsome black hole your people trapped-"

"And I took care to secure the connection to the remaining fragments when we started to leave the universe; we shouldn't have lost this much power this quickly," the Doctor said, shaking his head as he stared at the console. "It's as though the matrix, the soul of the TARDIS, just vanished… but where would it go?"

After taking a moment to study the console before confirming that there was nothing more he could do, the Doctor sighed and shook his head as he looked up at Amy. "There's nothing we can do from here; we're going to have to get out and see where we are."

"Is that safe?" Amy asked.

"Before the power went down, I confirmed that the environment was habitable for us," the Doctor clarified, before he opened the door to reveal what he could only consider a vast junkyard, filled with components that he immediately recognised as spaceship parts even if the precise make and model eluded him.

"So… what kind of trouble's your friend in?" Amy asked, as she followed him outside.

"He was…" the Doctor began, before shaking his head in frustration; he'd invested too much time in training Amy to lie to her about something minor like this just to save face. "I don't know; he was talking about danger, but he apparently didn't have the time to give specifics."

"Ah," Amy said, before taking in her surroundings. "What is this? The scrap yard at the end of the universe?"

"Not end of, outside of," the Doctor corrected.

"OK, how can we be outside the universe?" Amy asked, still looking confused as she stared at him. "Isn't the universe… well, _everything_?"

"Imagine a great big soap bubble with one of those tiny little bubbles on the outside," the Doctor said, placing an arm around Amy's shoulders as he spoke.

"OK…" Amy said thoughtfully.

"Well, it's nothing like that, but it's a good analogy," the Doctor said, stepping back to examine the TARDIS again, placing one hand on the door to confirm the lack of the usual thrum that indicated the ship's continued existence. "Completely drained, look at her…"

"So… we're essentially in a tiny bubble universe on the outside of the bigger bubble universe?" Amy asked, examining what looked for all the world like a discarded washing machine.

"Essentially, no, but if it helps, yes," the Doctor said, taking in his surroundings once again, picking up a rock to test the gravity. "The place is full of rift energy; she'll probably refuel just by being here. Now, this place, what do you think, eh? Earth-normal gravity, breathable air, but it smells like…"

"Armpit?" Amy asked, sniffing the air experimentally before looking at their surroundings. "And where did all this stuff come from?"

"Rifts; now and then, stuff gets sucked through them," the Doctor said. "This isn't a bubble, it's a plughole with things getting sucked into it-"

"Thief!" an unfamiliar voice suddenly called out. "Thief! You're my thief!"

Turning to look at the source of the voice, the Doctor just had time to see a woman wearing a pale blue dress that looked like it had been thrown together at the last minute, thick dark hair practically piled above her head in a manner that looked as though it had never been brushed, pointing at him with an air of desperation about her.

"She's dangerous!" another, weaker voice said as the woman grabbed the Doctor's shoulders. "Guard yourselves!"

"Look at you; goodbye!" the woman said, staring at the Doctor in enthusiastic desperation. "No, not goodbye, what's the other one?"

The Doctor didn't have time to answer before she suddenly leaned over and kissed him, lips pressed together as though she had no real idea what she was doing, simultaneously inspiring something in the Doctor he hadn't felt in as long as he could remember…

"Watch out!" a male voice said, as the woman was suddenly pulled away from him. "Careful, keep back from her!"

As the woman was taken away, the Doctor noted that the other two speakers were an unfamiliar man and woman dressed in an assorted patchwork of clothes; the man was wearing a blue soldier's uniform and had with the right sleeve replaced and cloth draped over his right ear, while the woman was wearing a tatty dress and cardigan that gave the impression they'd also been assembled with whatever materials were available.

"Welcome, strangers, lovely," the man said, smiling sheepishly at them. "Sorry about the mad person."

"Why am I a thief?" the Doctor asked, looking at the woman as she took in her surroundings with sudden jerky movements of her head; it might be rude, but he was curious what was motivating her actions. "What have I stolen?"

"Me," the woman said. "You're going to steal me- you have stolen me- you _are_ stealing me- tenses are difficult, aren't they?"

"Oh, we are sorry, my dove," the older woman said, sounding tired as she looked at the Doctor, the woman reaching over to examine Amy's hair in a childish manner before walking past his companion. "She's off her head. They call me Auntie."

"I'm Uncle; I'm everybody's uncle," the man said, as the two shook hands with the Doctor and Amy before he indicated the unnamed woman in blue. "Just keep back from this one, she bites!"

"Do I?" the woman said. "Excellent."

The Doctor didn't even have time to react when the woman lunged forward and bit down on his neck, the Time Lord yelling out in pain before the other two strangers pulled the woman away.

"Biting's excellent!" the woman said, ignoring the Doctor's yells of pain as she looked at Amy (He suddenly wondered if she was like some overly-sensitive agent of the Remote, responding to brief comments as opposed to detailed signals, but shied away from that thought; thinking of the Remote brought back memories of Fitz and Compassion). "It's like kissing, only there's a winner!"

"Sorry," Uncle said. "She's doolally."

"No, I'm not doolally; I'm…" the woman began, humming as she tried to find the right word. "I'm… it's on the tip of my tongue. I've just had a new idea about kissing. Come here, you!"

"Hey!" Amy said, stepping forward to stand between the Doctor and the woman as she started to move towards him, the Doctor ducking behind Amy to escape another potential 'assault'. "You don't just-"

"You're angry," the woman said, suddenly coming to a halt as she looked thoughtfully at him. "No, you're not… you _will_ be angry. The little boxes will make you angry."

"Sorry?" the Doctor asked, moving past Amy to look at her directly, struck by the strange woman's suddenly more solemn manner. "The little what? Boxes?"

"Your chin is hilarious!" the woman said, the solemn mood vanishing as she laughed, reaching out to take a hold of the chin in question, before looking over at Amy. "It means the smell of dust after rain."

"What does?" Amy asked.

"Petrichor," the woman said.

"Uh… I didn't need to know that," Amy said.

"You will," the woman said, smiling simply at his friend.

"Idris, I think you should have a rest," 'Auntie' said.

"Yes, yes, good idea!" the woman who was apparently 'Idris' said. "I'll just see if there's an off switch."

With that bizarre statement, the woman collapsed to the ground, the Doctor and Amy hurrying over to examine her.

"That's it," Uncle said dismissively. "She's dead now; so sad."

"She's still breathing," Amy said, glaring up at Uncle; regardless of his title, he didn't seem to be expressing that much concern for his 'niece'.

"Nephew, take Idris somewhere she cannot bite people," Uncle said, indicating something behind him. Turning around, the Doctor smiled at the sight of a green-eyed Ood; they might have given him bad news in the past, but he wasn't one to blame the messenger, and he'd enjoyed spending some time with Ood Sigma after freeing the primary brain.

"Oh, hello!" he said, grinning at the creature.

"Uh… what is that?" Amy asked uncertainly.

"It's all right, it's an Ood!" the Doctor said reassuringly as he walked up to the creature. "Oods are good, love an Ood… hello, Ood; can't you talk? Oh, I see, it's damaged; may I?"

After the creature gave him a confirming nod, the Doctor removed the top half of the sphere to examine the Ood's translator, the Doctor only half-paid attention to Auntie's comment about House 'repairing' them as he adjusted the relevant settings. Satisfied that he'd done what he could, the Doctor put the sphere back together and turned it on, only to be shocked as he heard a familiar-yet-unfamiliar voice.

" _If you are receiving this message, please help me_ ," the voice said, the sphere glowing green as several voices spoke. " _Send a signal to the High Council of the Time Lords on Gallifrey. Help! I'm still alive! I don't know where I am. I'm on some rock-like planet_ -"

There were other voices behind that message, but Nephew switched off the translator before the Doctor could pick anything up clearly.

"Uh… was that him?" Amy asked.

"No, no, it's picking up something else…" the Doctor said, fighting down the urge to think of the best possible answer to that question; he could hope for the best, but he had to be prepared for the worst. "But that's... That's not possible. That's... Who else is here? Tell me. Show me! Show me!"

"Just what you see," Auntie said. "It's just the four of us, and the House. Nephew, will you take Idris somewhere safe where she can't hurt nobody?"

"The House?" the Doctor repeated, ignoring 'Idris' as Nephew picked her up; he had bigger priorities than a madwoman right now. "What's the house?"

"House is all around you, my sweets," Auntie said with a broad smile, Uncle demonstrating her words by jumping slightly beside her. "You are standing on him. This is the House; this world. Would you like to meet him?"

"Meet… the planet?" Amy repeated sceptically.

"I'd love to," the Doctor said, holding up a finger to halt Amy; aside from the fact that you didn't get a chance to talk with a seemingly sentient planet every day, it might be interesting to learn more about what he'd just heard through the Ood translator.

"What's wrong?" Amy asked, looking anxiously at him as Auntie and Uncle led the way into a cave system. "Were those voices…?"

"Time Lords," the Doctor said, rubbing his fingers thoughtfully before he looked back at her. "It's not just the Corsair. Somewhere close by there are lots and lots of… Time Lords."

It might be a gamble to assume that all of them were like the Corsair- it wasn't like he knew where the Rani and the Monk had been when everything fell apart in those last few days, and those were just the most prominent renegades- but if he could just find another of his race…

"Come, come, come," Uncle said, guiding them through a dark tunnel into a glowing green cavern, girders on the roof giving the impression that this had once been part of something bigger and a pile of junk up against one wall. "You can see the House and he can look at you and he…"

"I see," the Doctor said, peering through a grate in the floor at what lay below; the green glow might be unusual, but there was definitely some form of sentience down there making that stuff move, if his senses were telling him the truth. "This asteroid is sentient."

"We walk on his back, breathe his air, eat his food…" Auntie said

"Smell its armpits," Amy muttered in a low voice, her nose wrinkling at the smell around them.

" _ **And do my will**_ ," Auntie and Uncle said simultaneously, in a deep voice that clearly didn't belong to them, both suddenly standing up straight as opposed to their earlier slouches. " _ **You are most welcome, travellers**_."

"Uh… that's the _planet_ talking, right?" Amy asked, looking at the Doctor for confirmation.

"Yes," the Doctor said briefly, before crouching down to feel the floor below him; it was hard to tell from a small sample, of course, but so far the planet exterior felt fairly normal. "So you're like a... sea urchin? Hard outer surface is the planet we're walking on, while you're the big, squashy, oogly thing inside?"

" _ **That is correct, Time Lord**_ ," House replied.

"Ah!" the Doctor said, attention refocused with this positive identification. "So you've met Time Lords before?"

" _ **Many travellers have come through the rift, like Auntie and Uncle and Nephew**_ ," House replied. " _ **I repair them when they break**_."

"So there are Time Lords here, then?" the Doctor asked, turning around to address the two human speakers more directly; they might not be House itself, but it felt saner than talking to thin air.

" _ **Not any more**_ ," House replied. " _ **But there have been many TARDISes on my back in days gone by**_."

"Well, there won't be any more after us," the Doctor said, suddenly grim at the thought. "Last Time Lord. Last TARDIS."

" _ **A pity**_ ," House said. " _ **Your people were so kind. Be here in safety, Doctor. Rest, feed, if you will**_."

As the two 'natives' lowered their heads, clearly released from House's control, Amy looked anxiously over at him.

"Tell me we're not actually staying here, right?" she asked.

"It seems like a friendly planet, literally," the Doctor said, restraining his subconscious apprehension for the moment; he had to investigate the source of those calls before he made a decision one way or the other. "Mind if we poke around a bit?"

"You can look all you want," Auntie said with her usual smile. "Go, look. House loves you."

As Auntie cupped Amy's face with her hands while saying goodbye, the Doctor noted and disregarded the observation that her left hand, far thicker and more muscular than the right, was definitely not that of a woman; he had more important things to investigate right now than what could just be a difficult-to-discuss birth defect.

"Come on, Pond," he said, clapping his hands together to try and feign enthusiasm; everything was up in the air right now and he was going to think positive until he knew otherwise. "We're just going to… see the sights."

He wasn't sure what he was expecting to find, but he was sure that it would be interesting…


	11. Meeting the TARDIS

"So… we're going as soon as the TARDIS is refuelled, right?" Amy asked, after they'd spent a few minutes walking through the caverns.

"No," the Doctor said firmly. "There are Time Lords here; I heard them and they need me."

"After… what you did?" Amy asked uncertainly. "I mean, _I_ get that you didn't have a choice, but you weren't on great terms with everyone _before_ this happened…"

"Yes, but if they're like the Corsair, they're good," the Doctor said, looking back at Amy with a hopeful grin. "I can save them!"

"Then… you tell them what happened to the others?" his companion asked, clearly sceptical. "I mean, everything with the Grandfather is _very_ complicated…"

"I can explain," the Doctor said firmly. "Tell them why I had to."

That statement answered Amy's questions more than anything else he might have said.

"You want to be forgiven," she said, looking sympathetically at her friend.

"…Doesn't everyone?" the Doctor asked, looking back at her with an uncertain expression, before he reached into his jacket and frowned.

"Something wrong?" Amy asked.

"My screwdriver," the Doctor said, looking apologetically back at her. "I left it in the TARDIS; it's in my jacket."

"Aren't you-?" Amy began.

"My _other_ jacket," the Doctor clarified.

"…All right," Amy said, sighing and shaking her head as she looked at her friend. "Just… be careful, all right?"

"Of course," the Doctor replied, smiling back at her. "I'm always careful."

Amy avoided responding to that comment; the circumstances of her first meeting with him didn't exactly support _that_ statement…

* * *

As Amy headed back towards the TARDIS, the Doctor turned his attention back to the matter at hand; if he was going to make contact with the Time Lords here, it would be best to do it on his own at first, rather than worry about how they'd react to him having a human with him. He might have changed the rules about outsiders on Gallifrey during his tenure as President, but that didn't mean that old attitudes would stop easily; he'd still needed support from the likes of Andred, Borusa and Flavia to ensure that his efforts remained valid before Romana returned to Gallifrey to 'enforce' them in person-  
  
He stopped that thought quickly; thinking about Romana just reminded him what she'd become in their last meeting, during that dark mess that had culminated in so many deaths. Continuing his search through the caverns, the Doctor reached cautiously out with his psychic senses, trying to find the minds that Nephew's translator had detected earlier…  
  
"Come on…" he said, pulling out his screwdriver to help his search. "Where are you… where are you all…?"  
  
Following his senses to a small alcove, he paused in contemplation for a moment before he opened the small cabinet before him, already knowing what he would find and wanting a last brief moment of denial before facing the facts. As he stared at the glowing white boxes inside the cupboard, a multitude of Time Lord voices filling his mind as he processed the sight in front of him, he resisted the urge to punch the wall.  
  
Once, just once, he'd like to find himself making a _nice_ discovery about a Time Lord secret; ever since he'd learned what had happened to Omega, his initial beliefs about his people as unconcerned but fundamentally benevolently passive observers became increasingly bleak…  
  
This might not paint the Time Lords in a negative light, but it was still depressing.  
  
"Just admiring your Time Lord distress signal collection," he said, sensing Auntie and Uncle coming up behind him. "Nice job. Brilliant job. Really thought I had some friends here... but this is what the Ood translator picked up. Cries for help from the long dead…"  
  
With that said, he turned to glare at the two figures, determined to get more genuine answers from them. "How many Time Lords have you lured here, the way you lured me? And what happened to them all?"  
  
"House… House is kind and he is wise-" Auntie began.  
  
"House repairs you when you break; yes, I know, but how does he mend you?" the Doctor asked, quickly scanning Uncle with the sonic screwdriver and coming to a horrifying realisation. "You have the eyes of a twenty-year-old."  
  
"Thank you-" Uncle began.  
  
"I mean it literally; your eyes are thirty years younger than you are," the Doctor said, ripping off Uncle's hat to reveal a blue alien ear as he re-assessed his earlier casual assessment of the self-identified 'Uncle'. "Your ears don't match, your right arm is two inches longer than your left, and how's your dancing, 'cause you've got two left feet? Patchwork people. You've been repaired and patched up so often, I doubt there's anything left of what used to be you. I had an umbrella like you once."  
  
"Oh, now, it's been a great arm for me, this," Auntie said, as the Doctor slapped her noticeably thicker hand away from him, his eyes falling on the distinctive tattoo he'd just been discussing with Amy earlier.  
  
"Corsair," he said grimly.  
  
"He was a strapping big bloke, wasn't he, Uncle?" Auntie said. "Big fella. I got the arm and then Uncle got the spine and the kidneys."  
  
"Kidneys," the Doctor repeated, looking between them in disgust. "You gave me hope, and then you took it away. That's enough to make anyone dangerous; God knows what it will do to me! Basically... run!"  
  
He tried to keep his darker instincts suppressed most of the time- after the mess he'd made of his seventh life trying not to be the Valeyard, and the occasional unpleasant reminders of the Grandfather's continued presence in the universe, it was only natural to fear what he could be- but this was one occasion where he'd willingly bend that rule.  
  
As Auntie and Uncle retreated, the Doctor was about to turn back towards the TARDIS when he suddenly recalled something that the madwoman had said earlier; how could she have known that 'the little boxes' would make him angry…?  
  
Reaching into his pocket, he adjusted the sonic screwdriver to broadcast a signal that would lock the TARDIS doors by remote- whatever was happening here, Amy would be safest in the ship- and then he hurried further into the tunnels; if he'd been tracing his way around here properly, they _should_ have taken the woman along here…  
  
He rounded a corner and found himself in front of a makeshift cage, the woman sitting inside it in a pose that was almost meditative.  
  
"How did you know about the boxes?" he asked, looking urgently at the woman. "You said they'd make me angry; how did you know?"  
  
"Ah," the woman said, opening her eyes thoughtfully. "It's my thief."  
  
"Who are you?" the Doctor asked; he'd ponder what she meant by calling him that once he knew who she was.  
  
"Do you really not know me?" the woman asked, looking at him with a curious smile. "Just because they put me in here?"  
  
"They said you were dangerous-" the Doctor began.  
  
"Not the cage, stupid," the woman said, leaning forward and putting her hands on either side of her face. "In here. They put me in _here_. I'm the…"  
  
Despite himself, the Doctor was suddenly intrigued at the story; this woman knew far too much to just be some lunatic…  
  
"Oh, what do you call me?" the woman said, looking frustrated for a moment before looking at him with a smile. "We travel. I go…"  
  
As she pursed her lips, a familiar sound filled the small cavern they were standing in, the sound that the Doctor had heard everywhere he went for centuries…  
  
"The TARDIS?" he said sceptically.  
  
"Time-and-relative-Dimensions-in-Space; yes, that's it- names are funny!" the woman said, smiling as she stood up and leaned her head through the bars of her cage. "It's me; I'm the TARDIS."  
  
"No you're not!" the Doctor said, unable to believe he was hearing such a ridiculous claim as he turned away; Compassion was one thing, but _his_ ship just didn't have the capacity to operate on the human level on its own (That mess when it was contaminated by anti-time didn't count, what with it being fractured into two sides of its usual personality). "You're a bitey mad lady; the TARDIS is up-and-downy stuff in a big blue box-"  
  
"Yes, that's me; a Type Forty TARDIS," the woman said, sounding very satisfied at this identification. "I was already a museum piece, when you were young, and the first time you touched my console you said…"  
  
"I said you were the most beautiful thing I had ever known," the Doctor said out loud, the words matching the woman's strange statement, as she said something that only he and the TARDIS could know about…  
  
"And then you stole me," the woman continued. "And I stole you."  
  
"I borrowed you…" the Doctor said, falling almost automatically back on his usual defence of that particular action.  
  
"Borrowing implies the eventual intention to return the thing that was taken," the woman said, in a very self-satisfied tone. "What makes you think I would ever give you back?"  
  
It was the casual manner in which she phrased that statement that really convinced the Doctor of her identity. His 'communication' with the TARDIS might be limited to vague impressions through their telepathic link when she was particularly determined or frightened, and their relationship certainly had its ups and downs over the centuries, but the way she had brought up the ship's affectionate sense of ownership _felt_ familiar…  
  
"You're the TARDIS?" he said, turning to look at her.  
  
"Yes," the woman replied.  
  
" _My_ TARDIS?" he said again, unable to fully process what he was hearing.  
  
"My Doctor," the woman said indignantly, before stepping back and spreading her arms. "We have now reached the point where you open the lock."  
  
Following her recommendation, the Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and used it to unlock the cage, leaving the human TARDIS to step out of the cage and walk over to him, the two soon finding themselves face-to-face.  
  
"Are all people like this?" the woman asked, looking thoughtfully at him.  
  
"Like what?" the Doctor asked.  
  
"So much bigger on the inside?" the woman asked, staring at him for a moment before she turned away. "I'm… _oh_ , what is that word? It's so big… so complicated… so sad…"  
  
"But why?" the Doctor asked, looking at the woman in confusion. "Why pull the living soul from a TARDIS and pop it in a tiny human head? What does it want you for?"  
  
"It doesn't want me," the woman said, walking around him and sniffing at him.  
  
"How do you know?" the Doctor asked, taking a brief sniff of his jacket and dismissing the TARDIS's actions as unimportant; she was probably just exploring a sense she'd never really had before.  
  
"House eats TARDISes," the woman said.  
  
"House what?" the Doctor said, unable to believe what he'd heard. "What do you mean?"  
  
"I don't know; it's something I heard you say," the woman who was apparently his ship replied.  
  
"When?"  
  
"In the future."  
  
"House eats TARDISes?" the Doctor said automatically (Another self-fulfilling prophecy; those _always_ annoyed him…).  
  
"There you go," the woman said, putting a finger to his lips. "What are fish fingers?"  
  
"When do I say that?" the Doctor protested around the finger.  
  
"Any second," the woman replied as she removed her finger.  
  
"Of course!" the Doctor said, his mind suddenly making the connection between the woman's statement and the practicalities of it. "House feeds on rift energy and TARDISes are bursting with it, and not raw; all lovely and cooked, processed food… Mmm, fish fingers."  
  
"Do fish have fingers?" the woman asked.  
  
"But-but-but you can't _eat_ a TARDIS; it would destroy you!" the Doctor protested, trying to get the conversation back on track; this scenario was fascinating on an academic level, but it just didn't _work_ …  
  
"Unless you deleted the TARDIS matrix first," the woman corrected him.  
  
"So it deleted you?" the Doctor asked, unable to stop himself chuckling slightly; he'd just been starting to consider that her story was true, but if House deleted the TARDIS matrix she _couldn't_ be his ship…  
  
"But House can't just delete a TARDIS' consciousness; that would blow a hole in the universe," the woman continued. "So he pulls out the matrix, sticks it in a living receptacle and feeds off the remaining Artron energy."  
  
It was the rapid way in which she said it, more than just the fact that everything she'd said made sense, that convinced the Doctor that he was looking at his ship in human form; after spending so many centuries with him, she was bound to have picked up some of his 'quirks'…  
  
" _Amy_!" he yelled, eyes widening in horror as he realised what he'd just done; he'd sent her back to the TARDIS to be safe when they were on a living planet that _ate_ TARDISes…  
  
Turning around, he ran back through the cave towards his ship, wishing he'd brought his phone so that he could call Amy to warn her- he'd so rarely used it while he was on Earth that he'd just stopped keeping it on him after he'd left- but trying to focus on the more immediate priority; his companion and his home were about to be _eaten_ …

* * *

The more time Amy spent in the darkened TARDIS, the more she was convinced that the Doctor was up to something. Not only had she failed to find the sonic screwdriver or his 'other' jacket, but the door had been locked behind her and now there was some kind of eerie green light from outside the TARDIS that didn't fit in with what she'd seen earlier…  
  
God, she just wanted to have her friend back so that he could focus on getting the ship back into working order so they could return to their universe; dropping in on a pocket universe sounded interesting as a concept, but there really wasn't much to _do_ out there, and Auntie and Uncle just creeped her out…  
  
Suddenly, she found herself with something new to worry about when the loud sound that the Doctor had identified as the Cloister Bell- the bell that only rang when something _really_ dangerous was about to happen- filled the console room, followed by the sensation of a strong wind as the lights around her suddenly came back on as a dim green.  
  
"AMY!" the Doctor suddenly yelled from the other side of the doors. "You've got to get out of there!"  
  
"Doctor?" she called back to him, hurrying anxiously over to the door, testing the handle and finding it suspiciously locked. "What's going on out there?"  
  
Whatever the Doctor was about to say was suddenly interrupted when the familiar sound of materialisation filled the ship, leaving her to step back from the door in steadily-growing horror- the Doctor hadn't specified what would happen if the doors were opened in flight, but she'd heard enough to know that she shouldn't try it- as she took in the green-illuminated ship that suddenly seemed far more dangerous than it really should.  
  
"OK…" she said, trying to collect herself as she looked around herself, searching for some sign that the TARDIS was still the comforting place it had been. "I'm in flight… without the Doctor… outside the universe… but I'm in the TARDIS… I'm home… I'm safe…"  
  
" _ **You're half right**_ ," a deep voice said, echoing throughout the ship as Amy looked up at the ceiling in horror. " _ **I mean, you are in the TARDIS. What a great adventure. I should have done this half a million years ago. So, Amy, why shouldn't I just kill you now**_?"  
  
"H… House?" Amy repeated, staring at the ceiling in confusion as she tried to suppress her fear; the entity sounded far more malevolent now than when the Doctor had spoken to it in its cave. "What's going on? What-?"  
  
" _ **Oh, your ship was going to be my next meal before the Doctor revealed that it would also be my last**_ ," House said, sounding highly amused at the prospect. " _ **Naturally, I can't have that, so I'm taking a trip back to**_ **your** _ **universe so that I can find something else to feed on**_ -"  
  
"Hold on; you _hi-jacked_ the _TARDIS_ because you want a _snack_?" Amy said, fear forgotten in the face of her outrage at this indignity to the ship that had become her home. "You can't do-!"  
  
" _ **I can do anything I like, Amy;**_ **I** _ **have the power now**_ ," House said, still sounding confidently smug before his tone became more business-like. " _ **And you haven't answered my question; why shouldn't I just kill you now**_?"  
  
"Because…" Amy said, her mind racing as she went over what she knew of House and her lessons in psychology with the Doctor, "because… that would be boring."  
  
" _ **Boring**_?" House repeated.  
  
"Exactly," Amy said, trying to sound confident. "You need fun, don't you? That's why you kept Auntie and Uncle around, right; to make them suffer? You get off on being entertained, and killing me quickly do that for you, would it?"  
  
" _ **A fair point**_ ," House conceded after a moment's thought. " _ **So entertain me. Run**_."  
  
As Amy dived towards the door that led deeper into the TARDIS, she could only pray that House's awareness of his new body wasn't complete; maybe if she was quick enough, she could seal herself somewhere where he didn't have control yet, such as that Zero Room the Doctor had mentioned once or twice…


	12. Talking with the TARDIS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy this chapter (I skipped over the Doctor's talk with Uncle and Auntie, but it was just the same as it was in canon and covered nothing you didn't know already); a few more divergences from canon, as Amy finds herself facing additional threats in the House-TARDIS, and the Doctor has a few things to say to the human-TARDIS about its role in creating this new timeline…

"NO!" the Doctor yelled, staring in exasperation as Uncle collapsed to the ground mere moments after Auntie had; he'd suspected that House was keeping them together, but he hadn't anticipated that they'd collapse that quickly once the entity left. "You can't just die!"

Maybe it would have been hard to get them to tell him anything useful about House's plans, but even a little further information about the entity's history could have been useful; now he was stuck with no ideas and only a completely out-of-place TARDIS, while House was heading back to the primary universe, where he would either start trying to 'feed' on the Faction's makeshift shrine-TARDISes or make some stupid mistake that would give the Faction access to _his_ TARDIS…

"We need to go where I landed, Doctor," the TARDIS said from where she was sitting on the ground. "Quickly."

"Why?" the Doctor asked.

"Because we are there in three minutes; we need to go now!" the TARDIS said, standing up and running for the path, only to pause as she clutched her side in pain, looking back at the Doctor inquiringly. "Roughly how long do these bodies last?"

His concerns piqued by that query, the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and ran a quick scan, eyes widening in horror at the results.

"You're dying…" he said, staring at the woman containing the essence of his ship in horror.

"Of course I'm dying; I don't belong in a flesh body," the TARDIS said, impatiently taking the screwdriver from him. "I'll blow the casing in no time."

This whole situation was just getting worse and worse with every passing moment; his TARDIS's soul was in a dying body, its body had been hi-jacked by a twisted monster who saw people as playthings, and Amy was on her own in the one thing that should be a safe haven…

"No," the TARDIS said, looking firmly at him as she returned his screwdriver. "Don't get emotional; that's what the orangey girl says. You're the Doctor; focus."

"On _what_?" he asked in exasperation. "I'm a madman with a box, without a box! And I'm stuck down the plughole at the end of the universe on a stupid old junkyard!"

His eyes widened in realisation at that last statement; he'd been complaining about lack of resources, when he really had almost an _abundance_ of resources…

"Oh."

"Oh what?" the TARDIS asked.

"No I'm not," he said, grinning all the more broadly as he considered his epiphany.

"Not what?"

"It's not a junkyard; it's a _TARDIS_ junkyard!" he said, practically laughing with glee. "Come on…!"

He quickly halted his run towards the exit, turning around rapidly to look at the ship. "Sorry; do you have a name?"

"Seven hundred years and _finally_ he asks-" the TARDIS began in exasperation.

"Yes, and I'm sorry about that, but right now, what do I _call_ you?"

"You call me… Sexy," the TARDIS said, smiling at him in a slightly teasing manner.

"Only when we're alone…" the Doctor said, suddenly uncomfortable with his relationship with the TARDIS in this incarnation; now that he looked back, he did seem to almost _flirt_ with the ship a bit more in this body than he had before…

"We are alone," the TARDIS pointed out.

"Right," the Doctor said, deciding that he might as well just grin and bear the situation before him; 'sexy' wasn't _exactly_ a name, but he'd tolerate it for the moment when he had to call her something verbally. "Come along, sexy."

With a smile on his face as he focused on the immediate thrill of the situation, he led the TARDIS through the caves up to the surface of the planet, the sonic screwdriver out in front of him to confirm the route, until he finally reached the top of the small mountain, revealing a vast field of fragmented ships spread out before them, parts of TARDIS interiors mingled in with the battered remnants of whatever form the chameleon circuits had been frozen in when House consumed them…

"A valley of half-eaten TARDISes," the Doctor said solemnly. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I'm thinking that all of my sisters are dead," the TARDIS said, staring at the scattered junk before them with a faint tremor in her voice. "That they were devoured, and that we are looking at their corpses."

"Ah," the Doctor said, ashamed that he hadn't taken that aspect of this into account. "Sorry. No, I wasn't thinking that."

"No," the TARDIS said, still looking at the scattered material before them before turning back to look at him. "You were thinking you could build a working TARDIS console out of broken remnants of a hundred different models… and you don't care that it's impossible."

"It's not impossible as long as we're alive," the Doctor said firmly. "Amy needs us… so yeah; we're going to build a TARDIS."

It might be a long shot, but after reconstructing his original console from the ground up after he left Gallifrey with Susan with nothing more than what he found in his travels and what was in the ship when he'd taken it, he was sure that he could get _something_ put together when working with these resources…

* * *

Hurrying through the TARDIS corridors, Amy could only hope that House didn't have full access to the ship yet; he might have been living inside a planet before now, but surely he'd need time to adjust to having all these corridors to search through, particularly if she kept making a few random turns-  
  
" _ **So, are we having fun yet**_?" House suddenly asked. " _ **I'm rather enjoying the sensation of having you running around inside me**_ …"  
  
As the corridor in front of her suddenly turned into a drop, Amy tried to ignore House's further rants as she moved carefully around the edge of the sudden pit to another corridor on the same 'level' as her own position.  
  
She wasn't going to let this psychotic sentient planet get the better of her; she just needed to keep going long enough to give the Doctor time to work something out…  
  
" _ **You know**_ ," House said, as Amy ran down another corridor, desperately looking for a room containing something useful, " _ **I'm thinking too three-dimensionally about this; it's trickier, but I**_ **do** _ **have other options**_ …"  
  
Amy didn't bother asking House what he meant by that comment, but the sudden appearance of a short figure in black armour with a dome-like head aiming a gun at her forced her to think of something else as she ran back the way she'd come and find another route, the creature's footsteps audible behind her; it wasn't particularly fast, but it was moving fairly briskly nonetheless. She almost ran past a half-open door before she saw the contents, quickly turning to dive into the room on the other side and grab the first thing she saw that could be used as a weapon.  
  
As the armoured figure walked past the room, clearly looking for her but missing the door, Amy lunged out of the room and struck the creature on the back with the cricket bat, sending it falling to the ground as she struck the small tube on the back of the creature's neck.  
  
She didn't know what she'd just done or how that thing had arrived here, but her latest enemy was down for the count and she had a weapon; it wasn't a great one, but it was something.  
  
Stuck for anything else to do, Amy tightened her grip on the bat and kept on running, hoping and praying that something would come to her-  
  
Rounding another corner, Amy froze in horror at the sight before her; a skeletal figure, so decayed she couldn't even tell what gender it had been before its death, lying on the ground, one hand stretched out in front as though it had been crawling, _wearing her clothes_ …  
  
She'd stumbled into her own future; she was going to _die_ in here-  
  
 _NO_!  
  
The Faction might change and manipulate history whenever they wished, but if it was still possible to change history to counter them, she could _definitely_ escape this; she was _not_ going to die in here!  
  
She knew the Doctor would come for her, but she had to focus on keeping it together; House was still learning about what he could do, but that wouldn't last for long.  
  
 _Doctor,_ hurry… she thought to herself as she hurried along another corridor, fleeing the nightmarish vision of her own corpse, forcing herself to remember that it wasn't real, that House was just screwing with her mind, that she couldn't afford to trust _anything_ she saw here until she saw the Doctor again…  
  
"Hello there," an unfamiliar voice said. Spinning around, Amy was completely lost when she found herself facing a young woman with dark skin and hair in thin dreadlocks, wearing a short light pink dress and a dark leather waistcoat-like jacket, holding a gun and staring at her with a teasing grin.  
  
"Who…?" Amy said, looking uncertainly at the young woman. It was hard to imagine how House could have drawn someone else into the TARDIS at random, but Amy thought she remembered the Doctor mentioning at least one dark-skinned past companion who had a definite penchant for weapons, even if she'd imagined the woman to be somewhat older than this from the Doctor's stories. "Roz?"  
  
"Roz?" the woman repeated, her teasing smile replaced with a grim glare.  
  
"Roslyn Forrester?" Amy said; maybe Roz hadn't adopted that name yet, or maybe she just didn't like strangers knowing it? "I'm… well, I travel with the Doctor in the future-"  
  
"Yeah, and you erased _me_ as a result of it!" the other girl said, aiming the gun at Amy and pulling the trigger; the Scottish girl was only just able to dive out of harm's way before the bullet went through the area where her head had been moments ago. " _I_ was meant to be with him; how could you do that to your _friend_?"  
  
"Friend?" Amy repeated, staring at the girl incredulously. "Roz, I never even _met_ you-!"  
  
"I'm not _Roz_ ; I'm-" the woman began, before she vanished as suddenly as she'd appeared, leaving Amy staring at the place where she'd been in confusion.  
  
" _ **Brief, but**_ _ **interesting**_ ," House's voice echoed through the corridor once again, chuckling to himself. " _ **A few simple tweaks of the dimensional barriers, and I can generate brief projections of what should have been**_ … _**clearly not that meaningful to you, of course, but maybe if I keep working I'll find something more interesting**_ …"  
  
Amy refused to waste time asking House what he meant by that statement; she was already certain that she could hardly trust anything he had to say to her, even if she could be confident she would understood it (Tweaking dimensional barriers certainly didn't sound like something he should be doing anyway).  
  
She couldn't afford to start wondering what that woman had been talking about; she had to keep _moving_ …

* * *

Based on the parts that the Doctor and the TARDIS had discovered lying around, House's method of TARDIS consumption tended to focus on 'eating' the central power sources more than the ship's individual components; most of the pieces must have been scattered around after the dimensional interface had violently collapsed, much like what had happened to his own ship on Frontios (Once of the closest calls he'd ever had; he was still relieved that the Gravis hadn't known enough about how TARDISes worked to realise what he was doing to it).  
  
Finding a reasonably-intact console room had been straightforward enough; it was just a floor, one wall, and part of a ceiling, with various panels missing but it gave them a framework to work with. With the most vital part established, the Doctor was trying to find replacements for some of the more vital individual components that had been lost when this console's original TARDIS had been destroyed, along with providing it with some kind of 'shell'; he didn't have time to completely surround it, but they just needed something a bit more stable…  
  
"Bond the tube directly into the tachyon diverter," the TARDIS called over to him as he tried to drag the wall fragment he'd managed to recover over to the console, the ship tapping another small component.  
  
"Yes, yes, I have actually rebuilt a TARDIS before, you know; I know what I'm doing!" he called back to his ship; he might not have needed to perform this kind of operation in the past, but he wasn't exactly inexperienced at working on his ship.  
  
"You're like a nine-year-old trying to rebuild a motorbike in his bedroom," the TARDIS said as she studied a circuit board. "And you never read the instructions."  
  
"I always read the instructions!" the Doctor countered.  
  
"There's a sign on my door; you've been walking past it for seven hundred years," the TARDIS said, pointing at him. "What does it say?"  
  
"That's not instructions!" the Doctor yelled.  
  
"There's an instruction at the bottom," the TARDIS clarified. "What does it say?"  
  
"'Pull to Open'," the Doctor said, grimly recalling the words in question (He'd actually grown rather fond of that sign; the part about 'Advice and Assistance Obtainable Immediately' just felt _right_ to him…).  
  
"Yes, and what do you do?" the TARDIS continued.  
  
"I _push_!" the Doctor finished, giving the wall behind him another firm pull as he tried to shift it; this wasn't the time for such a stupid debate…  
  
"Every single time, for seven hundred years…" the TARDIS said despairingly before she glared at him. "Police Box doors open _out_ the way!"  
  
"Listen!" the Doctor yelled, throwing down the cable and storming over to the woman who was his ship. "I think I've earned the right to open my front doors any way I want!"  
  
"Your front doors?" the TARDIS repeated. "Have you any idea how childish that sounds?"  
  
"Oh, we're getting lessons in being 'childish' from _you_ now?" the Doctor spat before he could stop himself.  
  
"Excuse me?" the TARDIS said, looking sceptically at him.  
  
"Siding with Rassilon like that because you were jealous of Charley, I could excuse- that anti-time explosion messed up _both_ of us and he took full advantage of that- but you jeopardised all of _reality_ because you couldn't stand to see me die?" the Doctor asked, venting the personal fear he'd never been comfortable expressing when talking to his ship the usual way.  
  
"I couldn't _stand_ to see you become everything you've ever fought!" the TARDIS countered firmly. "If I'd known what that virus would do to me and what I'd do in return, I would have stopped keeping it completely trapped and just tried to warn you, but by the time I realised the scale of the problem I wasn't in any shape to _do_ anything about it! Do you think I would have done that to your people if I'd known there was even a _possibility_ I'd cause all that damage? Do you think I would have forced my _daughter_ to _die_ for you if there was another way?!"  
  
Both of them froze at that last statement, the words that the TARDIS had just uttered reminding them both of one issue they had never really even thought about after the death of the person in question.  
  
"Compassion," the Doctor said, looking solemnly at his ship. "You… saw her as your daughter?"  
  
"She was reborn from my signals, she travelled with you, she shared my link to you… why shouldn't I call her my daughter?" the TARDIS asked, looking awkwardly back at him. "I know she never saw _me_ that way, but…"  
  
"But what parent ever has a perfect relationship with their children?" the Doctor asked (He would _not_ think about that mess on Messaline…), trying not to look too awkward as he tried not to look at the TARDIS. "I sometimes wonder if that was part of the reason I didn't want to let the Time Lords have her; I wanted her to be free, but… but she was all that I had left of _you_ …"  
  
"You kept her free because you wanted her to be free," the TARDIS said firmly. "You're the Doctor; you aren't perfect, but you aren't that selfish either."  
  
"Just like you aren't that selfish, sexy," the Doctor said, smiling gratefully back at his ship. "I appreciate what you tried to do for me with the paradox virus; it's just… it all went so wrong later…"  
  
"We all sometimes need someone to blame when things go wrong," the TARDIS said, smiling at him in understanding. "The paradox was… frustrating… at times, but I never blamed her for what happened after you saved her from the R-101."  
  
"She wasn't just a paradox, you know…" the Doctor began, before he shook his head and smiled at her. "Anyway, that's not important right now; as long as we're talking, maybe I could ask why you don't always take me where I want to go?"  
  
"I always take you where you _need_ to go," the TARDIS pointed out.  
  
"You do…" the Doctor mused, suddenly smiling at this reminder of something he'd never consciously acknowledged; wherever he landed somewhere on their own accord, without the Time Lords redirecting them to deal with the latest mission or some other thing trying to trap him, he was always in the incarnation most qualified to deal with the crisis at hand.  
  
"Look at us; _talking_!" he said, grinning as he turned back to his ship. "Wouldn't it be amazing if we could always talk? Even when you're stuck inside the box?"  
  
"But you know I'm not constructed that way," the TARDIS said, looking at him in honest bemusement. "I exist across all space and time, and _you_ talk and run around and bring home strays…"  
  
The TARDIS suddenly stumbled forward, the Doctor only just managing to catch her before she hit the ground.  
  
"You OK?" he asked anxiously.  
  
"Kidneys are failing," the TARDIS replied, stepping back as it collected itself. "It doesn't matter; we need to finish assembling the console."  
  
"Using a console without a proper shell," the Doctor noted, suddenly needing to ensure that the TARDIS understood the risks; she might be a TARDIS herself, but that didn't mean she was fully aware of what her usual crew could cope with. "It's not going to be safe."  
  
"This body has about eighteen minutes left to live, and the universe we're in will reach Absolute Zero in three hours," the TARDIS noted. "Safe is relative."  
  
"Right," the Doctor said, hurrying back to the wall he'd been dragging earlier. "Then we'd better get a move on, eh, old girl?"  
  
He wasn't going to think about how little time they had right now; he had a plan, and it _would_ work…

* * *

As she kept running desperately through the TARDIS, Amy wished that she could just find somewhere she could rest for a moment; she couldn't keep up this pace, but she equally couldn't afford to stop for too long.  
  
She wasn't even sure where House was coming up with some of the things he'd been throwing at her lately; he just seemed to delight in screwing with her mind. She'd had to evade giant metal things that were almost certainly the Cybermen the Doctor had told her about, and there'd been a close call with what looked like a Roswell Grey accompanied by something that could have been a 'bald' bird or a lizard, but she'd managed to get out of the way of both in time; whatever House was doing to bring them here, he apparently couldn't maintain it for long.  
  
Desperate to find somewhere safe to rest, Amy dived through another door to the left, and suddenly found herself in a very anomalous room. Compared to the usual roundel-patterned walls she was familiar with, this room had walls made of wooden panels, and gave off a strange feeling of serenity as she took in the glass cases around her, each one containing a small object (She also noted that the light in this room wasn't affected by the same green tint as the rest of the TARDIS, but that could mean anything and she wasn't ready to assume she was safe her just because of that). Most of the items were surprisingly simple- one case was just holding a scrap of tartan and another held what looked like an old school textbook, of all things- but then she saw other, more unique-looking objects, such as a golden star and part of what looked like a suit of advanced armour, and she was given more to think about…  
  
Then her eyes fell on a small figure in one of the glass cases, resembling a toy robot twisted out of shape, and her eyes widened in understanding.  
  
"Kamelion…" she whispered, reaching out to touch the case with a new sense of sympathy as she remembered the Doctor's tale of the figure in this case; a shape-shifting android programmed to automatically serve the strongest mind in his vicinity, whose desire to do good had been continually thwarted by his programmed limitations, until he'd asked the Doctor to kill him to ensure that he wouldn't endanger his friends…  
  
"Oh God," she said, as she took in the rest of the cases around her, suddenly realising what they were for.  
  
These were all relics of his old companions…  
  
A few were easier to place than others- the bit of kilt must be from that 'Jamie McCrimmon' person the Doctor had told her about, and she thought she recalled him mentioning that his companion Adric had worn a gold star-badge- but the fact that she couldn't recognise them immediately wasn't important; what _was_ important was that all of these boxes held relics of the Doctor's past companions…  
  
Was this her future?  
  
Was this all that her life would amount to one day from his perspective; just another friend to remember in this little museum of his?  
  
It wasn't like it was the worst fate in the world- she still wanted to see more of the wider universe before she decided what she wanted to do with her life outside of being the Doctor's companion- but she suddenly, selfishly, wanted to be so much more than just the latest passenger in the TARDIS… wanted to be more than the person keeping him company right now…  
  
Amy shook that thought aside and turned to leave the room; as comforting yet thought-provoking as this room was, she couldn't afford to remain; she didn't know what House was going to throw at her next, but she wasn't going to give him an excuse to desecrate the Doctor's memorial room if he really hadn't managed to enter it yet. Picking up the pace, she began to run once again, the green tint of the corridors feeling even more oppressive after the peace of the sanctuary room…  
  
" _ **Ah, there you are**_ ," House mused (Amy wondered if he could actually control what she heard or if his thoughts were vocal even if he didn't want them to be). " _ **You know, all that tinkering with time was fun, but I shouldn't overlook the present; my new corridors hold their share of interesting secrets in**_ **this** _ **time on its own, after all**_ …"  
  
Amy didn't bother to ask what he meant by that, but just continued to run as fast as she could. As she approached a T-junction, she turned around to run along the right path, but was shocked to find herself facing an entire wall of the TARDIS seemingly dissolving right in front of her.  
  
" _ **You know, I don't think even your precious Doctor remembers why this was here any more**_ ," House said mockingly. " _ **Shall we find out**_?"  
  
Evidently uninterested in Amy's response, the wall collapsed as she watched, revealing an extension to the current corridor that led into a deeper darkness, until she heard a faint sound like whirring servo motors, suggesting that something was coming this way from the other side.  
  
As it emerged from around a corner, the edge only just visible in the shadows, the source of the sound was revealed to be some kind of robot on wheels, battleship grey in colour, with a gun and some sort of suction cup on it. It studied her with a single electronic eye.  
  
"You are an associate of the Doctor," it said.  
  
"Ye-essss…" Amy said, looking uncertainly at the robot. "And you are?"  
  
The robot seemed to consider its response, but before it could reply, its single eye turned green.  
  
" _ **Now**_ ," House's voice said through the robot's speakers, " _ **it is another tool in my efforts**_."  
  
With nothing else to do, Amy turned and began to run back along the corridor as the robot began to fire some kind of laser weapon at her, House laughing all the while as she headed for the other end of the original junction.  
  
Even as she ran, Amy had to wonder at the design of the new arrival; why would anyone make a robot that looked like a dog on wheels?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, Amy does know of K9, but it's too dark for her to see his name on the side and she's always assumed that he was a robot dog with _legs_ rather than his actual shape, so the analogy never occurred to her. For those who've read the novels, K9’s presence here is for the same reason as his appearance in 'The Gallifrey Chronicles'; for those who haven't, I'll explain what he's doing in the TARDIS in the next chapter  
> On a similar note, the Doctor's reference to the TARDIS 'siding with Rassilon' occurred in the audio 'Zagreus' when the Doctor and the TARDIS were both contaminated by anti-time after containing an explosion of anti-time to save the Doctor's current companion Charley; the anti-time energies gave the Doctor and the TARDIS split personalities, the Doctor alternating between himself and the destructive Zagreus (After a figure from Gallifreyian myth) and the TARDIS alternating between the weaker part of itself that wanted to help the Doctor and its stronger, darker side that was jealous of the Doctor being willing to sacrifice it for Charley (All that stuff about the virus was covered in the first story of this series)


	13. Shifting Fears

Studying the results of his work, the Doctor smiled in satisfaction; the new 'junk TARDIS' might be a haphazard, randomly-assembled mess of components from various models, but he was fairly sure that he had enough compatible components together to create something that would at least dematerialise and be under his control. It might only have three walls around the central control console, but with the force-field generator established and only a short hop required, that should be enough…

He just wished that he had a more reliable companion than a dying TARDIS, trapped in an unfamiliar form, while facing an adversary that had managed to hi-jack the only real constant in his life; he had faith in his ship most of the time, but this was far from a conventional situation.

Still, he had been slightly gratified to learn that the TARDIS had wanted to leave Gallifrey with him in the first place; her comment about how she always took him where he needed to go had been encouraging to hear, but knowing that she'd wanted to leave with him in the first place helped him feel a bit better about everything he'd had to put her through in the past (Apologising to her after the fact didn't take away his occasional guilt when things had been particularly rough).

"Right," he said, as he handed the TARDIS one of the velvet ropes he'd salvaged and attached to the new junk console, taking a tight hold of the other one as he looked grimly at their current transport; this console was already falling apart, but considering that they were working with an old Type Seventy as the core component, if they were quick about it that wouldn't matter. "OK, let's go; follow that TARDIS!"

Grinning at the prospect, he tapped the appropriate controls to set the ship in motion, only to curse in frustration when nothing happened beyond a brief moan and a sudden spark of energy as another part fell off, his pleas of encouragement meeting with nothing more than a larger spark.

"No!" the Doctor yelled, slamming his hands against the console in frustration .

"What's wrong?" the TARDIS asked, pausing in her examination of her face in a shaving mirror.

"It can't hold the charge, it can't even start; there's no _power_ …" the Doctor said, still leaning against the console, all too aware of the scale of his failure; this console couldn't even _try_ to offer him the comfort he'd come to expect from his darker days when it was just him and his ship.

He'd come so close, but now his last gambit had failed…

"I've got nothing," he said, looking over at his TARDIS in exasperation.

"Oh my beautiful idiot," the TARDIS said, looking at him with a warm smile. "You have what you've always had; you've got me."

The Doctor didn't have time to ask what his ship was talking about before she reached up to touch her lips with two fingers before reaching out to touch the central column, her fingers, eyes and lips glowing gold with the energy at the heart of the TARDIS. As the console surged into life, the Doctor just had time to set their new transport to home in on the nearest other TARDIS before the ship was surrounded by energy and they left House's twisted dimension, hurtling back into the void outside the universe.

 _I'm coming, Amy_ …

"We've locked on to them!" the TARDIS called over to him as the ship shook around them. "She'll have to lower the shields when we're close enough to phase inside!"

"Can you get a message to Amy?" the Doctor called back to his ship, indicating the relevant part of the console. "The telepathic circuits are online!"

"Understood!" the TARDIS replied, quickly reaching out to place her hands on this console's telepathic circuits, closing her eyes as a glow surrounded her palms…

* * *

Amy had no idea what House was planning to do with her once he actually caught her, but so far this chase actually seemed to have been slightly less dangerous. Being chased by a robot dog was an unusual turn of events, but compared to House twisting the TARDIS architecture around and bringing in all kinds of weird things to confront her, this was actually a welcome change of pace. She had just started climbing up another vertical tunnel- did these actually exist normally or was House just being weird?- when she suddenly felt like something was being driven through her brain-  
  
" _Hello, Orangey Girl_!" the strange woman from the planet said, seemingly staring right at her.  
  
"Wh… what?" Amy asked, trying to ignore the pain as she listened to the woman's words.  
  
" _Don't worry; telepathic message_!" the Doctor suddenly yelled, leaning over so that he was briefly beside the strange woman before moving back once again.  
  
" _You have to go to the old control room_ ," the woman explained. " _I'm putting the route in your head. When you get there use the purple slider on the nearest panel to lower the shields_."  
  
"OK…" Amy said, as she was suddenly left with the strong sensation of needing to be somewhere else and knowing _precisely_ what route to take to get there.  
  
" _You'll have about twelve seconds before the room goes into phase with the invading Matrix_ ," the woman continued. " _I'll send you the passkey when you get there. Good luck_!"  
  
As the vision and the headache faded, Amy was left with nothing else to do but keep on climbing as she followed the feeling in her head, lost for what the Doctor was doing with that strange woman and hoping she wasn't making a very big mistake…  
  
Reaching the top of the pit, she started heading down the relevant corridor, only to halt as she suddenly noticed something glowing down another corridor. Turning around, she tightened her grip on the cricket bat that had been serving as her temporary weapon, but when she saw the creature that House had introduced as 'Nephew' before the Doctor identified it as an Ood, she decided to just keep running. She wasn't sure how that thing had ended up in the TARDIS- it must have sneaked inside while she was following the Doctor as he tried to search the planet and been left to wander the corridors- but from what she recalled of the Doctor's stories about his past encounters with the Ood, she didn't want to let that thing get _too_ close; if it came down to cricket bat versus weaponised communication ball, she wasn't about to bet that the bat would win…  
  
Finally, she reached a locked door at the end of the corridor, sighing in relief as she slumped against it before another sudden headache signified another vision from the mystery woman.  
  
"Crimson, Eleven, Delight, Petrichor?" Amy repeated, as the words were spoken by the other woman before the vision ended. "What…?"  
  
Then she remembered what the strange woman had said to her during their first meeting; _petrichor- the smell of dust after rain_.  
  
"Telepathic password…" she said, unable to stop herself smiling at the simple ingenuity of it all; she wouldn't be surprised if this password wouldn't even work if it was thought by someone that the TARDIS didn't like already. "Oh, that's _good_ …"  
  
Closing her eyes, she focused on what was needed right now; a red flag, her eleventh birthday cake, the moments when she and the Doctor were travelling to their next destination in the TARDIS, the smell of dust after rain…  
  
As the door opened in front of her, Amy dived into the room, finding herself in what looked like a dimly-lit, almost organic version of the TARDIS control room, with strange pillars around a central console. Deciding to worry about that later, Amy quickly studied the console in front of her- it was similar to the one the Doctor had been training her on, but the cosmetic shift was enough to throw her off, and the lighting wasn't that good either- until she finally found the right control. Pulling it down, Amy turned around just in time to see Nephew walking through the door, quickly hurrying to the other side of the room as Nephew advanced.  
  
" _ **How did you find this place**_?" House's voice said. " _ **It's not on my internal schematics**_."  
  
"TARDISes are more than just what it shows on the map, House!" Amy called up to the ceiling. "Don't you know _anything_ about them?"  
  
" _ **I have been consuming TARDISes and destroying Time Lords for longer than your civilisation, Amelia Pond**_ ," House said grimly. " _ **I had hoped that you could join Nephew as my servant, but you are nothing but trouble, and that stupid dog holds nothing for me. Kill them**_."  
  
" _We're coming in_!" Amy suddenly heard, as another headache delivered a new message from the mystery woman, distracting her from Nephew as it began to approach her. " _Get out of the way or you'll be atomised_!"  
  
"Where are you coming through?" Amy asked.  
  
" _I don't know_!" the woman replied before the message ended, leaving Amy alone against Nephew as the door opened once again and the robot dog entered as well. Stuck for anything else to do, Amy tried to press herself up against the console while manoeuvring around it- if the Doctor and the woman were coming into the ship, if she stayed near the middle of the room she _might_ be all right- but then a brilliant burst of energy filled the room, blinding Amy for a moment before the light had faded from her eyes to reveal the Doctor and the woman standing alongside a second TARDIS console that looked far more patchwork-esque than either of the ones she'd seen before.  
  
"Doctor, there's-" she began, indicating the door where the green-eyed robot dog was approaching them; questions could wait until after the imminent threat had been dealt with.  
  
" _K9_?" the Doctor said, briefly grinning at the sight before he seemed to realise what she was talking about as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the dog, the light in its eye going out and its head lowering.  
  
"Just turned him off; we can sort out what he's doing here later," the Doctor said, grinning at Amy before he looked at the strange woman, who was now sitting up on the ground beside the console. "Are you all right?"  
  
"Not good at all…" the woman said, shaking her head slightly as she gasped for breath. "How do you walk around in these things…?"  
  
"We're not quite there yet; just hold on," the Doctor said, looking anxiously at the woman before he turned back to Amy with an awkward smile. "Amy, this is… well, she's my TARDIS."  
  
Amy couldn't believe that the Doctor had just said that.  
  
"Except she's a woman," the Doctor said, as though realising how bizarre that must have sounded. "She's a woman, and she's my TARDIS."  
  
" _She's_ the TARDIS?" Amy asked, incredulously indicating the woman.  
  
"And she's a woman," the Doctor repeated, still looking awkward despite the smile spreading across his face. "She's a woman, and she's my TARDIS."  
  
"Did you wish really hard?" Amy asked pointedly.  
  
"Shut up!" the Doctor protested awkwardly. "Not like that…"  
  
"Hello," the woman- the _TARDIS_ \- said, taking deep breaths as she stood up. "I'm… Sexy."  
  
"Really?" Amy said, unable to stop herself smirking as she looked at the Doctor.  
  
"Still shut up," the Doctor protested, but in a more half-hearted manner.  
  
" _ **The Environment has been breached and the dog is immobilised**_ ," House's voice echoed through the room. " _ **Nephew, kill them all**_."  
  
It was only when House mentioned the Ood that Amy remembered that it had been in the room moments ago, but a quick check of her surroundings confirmed that it had vanished; apart from her, the Doctor, and the apparently-human TARDIS, the only thing left in the room was K9.  
  
"What happened to him?" she asked, looking at the Doctor. "He was right where you materialised…"  
  
"Ah," the Doctor said awkwardly. "Must have been redistributed."  
  
"Meaning…?" Amy asked.  
  
"You're breathing him."  
  
"Oh God…" Amy said, slapping her hand over her mouth in disgust.  
  
" _ **Doctor**_ ," House said, as though only just registering who had breached the environment. " _ **I did not expect you**_."  
  
"Well, that's me all over, isn't it?" the Doctor noted as he wandered around the console. "Lovely old unexpected me."  
  
" _ **The big question is, now you're here, how to dispose of you**_?" House mused. " _ **I could play with gravity**_ …"  
  
Amy didn't have time to react before she suddenly felt as though an elephant had landed on her back, forcing her to the ground along with the Doctor and the woman-who-was-apparently-the-TARDIS…  
  
" _ **Or I could evacuate the air from this room and watch you choke**_ ," Hose continued, the pressure on Amy's back vanishing even as the atmosphere around her suddenly became unpleasantly stale.  
  
"You really don't want to do that!" the Doctor yelled, gasping as he clutched at his throat.  
  
" _ **Why shouldn't I just kill you now**_?" House asked, even as oxygen returned and Amy found herself able to breathe once again.  
  
"Because then I won't be able to help you," the Doctor responded. "Listen to your engines. Just listen to them. You don't have the thrust and you know it. I'm your only hope for getting out of your little bubble, through the rift, and into my universe, and _mine's_ the one with the food in! You just have to promise not to kill us… That's all, just promise."  
  
"You can't be serious-!" Amy began.  
  
"I'm very serious," the Doctor said, glancing briefly at the fallen TARDIS before he continued speaking. "I'm sure it's an entity of its word."  
  
" _ **You want me to give my word**_?" House said, even as the Doctor crouched down beside the fallen TARDIS to stroke her face, the two exchanging whispered words that Amy couldn't quite hear over House's own rant. " _ **Easy; I promise**_."  
  
"Fine, OK," the Doctor said, standing back up. "Just delete, oh, thirty percent of the TARDIS rooms; you'll free up thrust enough to make it through. Activate sub-routine Sigma-9."  
  
" _ **Why would you tell me this**_?" House asked.  
  
"Because we want to get back to our universe as badly as you do," the Doctor replied, spreading his arms casually. "And I'm nice."  
  
" _ **Yes**_ …" House said with a dark amusement to his tone. " _ **I can delete rooms, and I can also rid myself of vermin if I delete this room first. Thank you, Doctor, very helpful. Goodbye, Time Lord. Goodbye, little human. Goodbye, robotic dog. Goodbye, Idris**_."  
  
Amy didn't even have time to scream before the Doctor dived towards the robot dog, there was a blinding flash of light…

* * *

Unless Heaven had a bizarre interior decorator, Amy was fairly sure that she wasn't dead; Heaven might manifest as the TARDIS in some form or another, considering that most of her happier memories came from her time in the ship, but it wouldn't have the same green lighting that indicated that House was still in control (And she wasn't sure if robot dogs would go _anywhere_ after death, and that strange thing was now on the ground beside the woman-TARDIS).  
  
"Well, you could do that, but it just won't work," the Doctor said nonchalantly, standing back up from where he'd grabbed the dog by the collar. "Hardwired fail-safe; living things from rooms that are deleted are automatically deposited in the main control room. But thanks for the lift!"  
  
" _ **We are in your Universe now, Doctor; why should it matter to me in which room you die**_?" House asked. " _ **I can kill you just as easily here as anywhere. Fear me. I've killed hundreds of Time Lords**_."  
  
"Fear _me_ ; I've killed all of them…" the Doctor said grimly, his voice low so that Amy could only just hear him, before he raised his voice to address the entity directly. "Yeah, you're right; you've completely won! Oh, you can kill us in oodles of really inventive ways, but before you do kill us allow me and my friend Amy to congratulate you on being an absolutely worthy opponent?"  
  
"Congratulations?" Amy said, uncertainly following the Doctor's cue and clapping uncertainly, lost as to the Doctor's reasons for doing any of this.  
  
"Yep, you've defeated us!" the Doctor continued. "Me and my lovely friends here, and last, but _definitely_ not least the TARDIS Matrix herself, a living consciousness you ripped out of this very control room and locked up into a human body, and look at her!"  
  
" _ **Enough**_!" House said, as Amy hurried over to examine the still TARDIS-woman, anxiously noting that she'd stopped breathing; did that mean that the TARDIS was _dead_ …?  
  
"No, it's never enough!" the Doctor continued. "You forced the TARDIS into a body so she'd burn out safely a very long way away from this control room. A flesh body can't hold the TARDIS Matrix and _live_ ; look at her body, House!"  
  
" _ **And you think… I should mourn her**_?" House asked, clearly sceptical of the Doctor's purpose in bringing this up.  
  
"No," the Doctor said, his voice suddenly cold. "I think you should be very, _very_ careful about what you let back into this control room."  
  
Amy's question was answered when the TARDIS-woman opened her mouth and a stream of golden energy emerged from it, the energy swiftly spreading through the console room towards the roundels in the walls.  
  
She didn't know precisely what was happening, but she suddenly felt _really_ good about their chances…  
  
"You took her from her _home_ ," the Doctor explained, tone grim with an edge of self-satisfaction behind it as he spoke. "But now she's back in the box again… and she's _free_."  
  
"Oh yes…" Amy said, grinning as she realised what the Doctor was talking about.  
  
" _ **No**_!" House said, sounding like he was starting to panic as the green lighting around the room began to return to its standard gold, gold energy entering the walls and the console. " _ **Doctor, stop this- OW! Stop this now**_!"  
  
"Oh, look at my girl, look at her go…" the Doctor said, before throwing his arms up in the air in victory. " _Bigger on the inside_!"  
  
" _ **Make it stop**_ -!" House tried to protest.  
  
"See, House?" the Doctor said mockingly, spreading his arms as he spun around in the console room as though showing off his ship to the intruder. "That's your problem; size of a planet, but inside, you are _just_. _So_. _SMALL_!"  
  
" _ **MAKE! IT! STOP…**_!" House screamed, rage clearly impotent and useless in this situation.  
  
"Finish him off, girl," the Doctor said coldly, leaning over the nearest control panel as the green glow faded from the room amid House's final pained groans and yells, the TARDIS reverting to its usual golden light, followed by a sudden thrum.  
  
" _Doctor_?" the woman's voice said again. " _Are you there_?"  
  
Looking down at where the woman had been lying earlier, Amy was briefly confused at her absence, but then she looked up and saw the woman-TARDIS, now a glowing golden projection of herself.  
  
" _It's so very dark in here_ …" the woman said, looking upwards as though searching for something.  
  
"I'm here," the Doctor said, his voice soft as he walked over to the woman, who looked down towards him with a warm smile of her own.  
  
" _I've been looking for a word_ ," she said solemnly. " _A big, complicated word, but so sad. I've found it now_."  
  
"What word?" the Doctor asked, his voice a low whisper.  
  
" _Alive_ ," the woman replied, the word echoing around the console room as she smiled at him. " _I'm alive_."  
  
"Alive isn't sad," the Doctor said, Amy watching silently from off to the side; this was the Doctor's moment with his ship, but even if she felt like an intruder right now, her friend needed moral support more than anything else.  
  
" _It's sad when it's over_ ," the TARDIS-woman said. " _I'll always be here… but_ this _is when we talked and now even that has come to an end_. _There's something I didn't get to say to you_."  
  
"Goodbye," the Doctor said, eyes lowering at the thought.  
  
" _No_ ," the TARDIS said, smiling at him once again as her eyes gleamed, body trembling as though fighting the urge to cry. " _I just wanted to say… hello. Hello, Doctor. It's so very, very nice to meet you_."  
  
"Please…" the Doctor said, trembling with tears of his own. "I don't want you to… please…"  
  
As the projection began to glow even brighter, the Doctor stepped back as the woman spread her arms and raised her head, the sound of the TARDIS materialising filling the room as she vanished into light. Amy thought she heard the woman say something about 'love', but stayed silent; the Doctor was clearly too upset to want to talk about that now…  
  
"Mas-ter?" a new voice suddenly said, just as the Doctor had turned back to the console.  
  
"What…?" the Doctor said, wiping his eyes and turning to the source of the voice, breaking into a smile as he saw the robotic dog sitting there, eyes now glowing red as it looked up at him. " _K-9_?!"  
  
"Affirmative," the robot dog said, extending a small dish from its 'eye' as it looked at him, ears wiggling for a few moments before it retracted the dish. "You have regenerated since our last meeting."  
  
"Three times," the Doctor confirmed with a smile. " _And_ my timeline was severed from the Grandfather's before any of that, so there's no tie to me and the Grandfather any more."  
  
"Affirmative; scans confirm depletion of regenerative energy since last encounter," K-9 said, sounding briefly hopeful before he lowered his head slightly. "What is the status of Gallifrey and the Mistress?"  
  
"Gone," the Doctor said, initial smile gone in the face of this new reminder of how alone he was. "There was… nothing else I could do."  
  
"Acknowledged," K-9 confirmed, head lowering further before he looked back at the Doctor. "In the situation described, the necessity to obey my original instructions is irrelevant; if you wish, I shall remain with you."  
  
"Original instruct-?" Amy began.  
  
"Oh, who cares what he was sent here to do before; it doesn't matter," the Doctor said, grinning as he stood back slightly to present Amy to the robot dog. "K-9, this is Amy; Amy, K-9."  
  
"Uh… hi?" Amy said, waving awkwardly at the robot dog. "It's… nice to meet you?"  
  
"Affirmative," K-9 replied. "It is most agreeable to meet you as well, Mistress."  
  
"Right…" Amy said, making a mental note to talk to the dog about titles later- 'Mistress' just evoked images of her in a corset, and she just didn't know if ( _the Doctor would like that_ ) she'd ever feel comfortable in something like that- before turning to the Doctor. "Old friend?"  
  
"Goes all the way back to when I had big hair and a massive scarf," the Doctor said with a smile, as he crouched down to pat K-9. "This is the mark 2 K-9; first stayed with Leela, sent the third to Sarah Jane Smith, built the fourth to replace that… I always meant to build myself another one, but never had the time, but _very_ nice to have you back, old boy!"  
  
"Affirmative," K-9 replied. "Upgrades would be appreciated if available, Master."  
  
"I'll see what I can do," the Doctor said, nodding at the dog with an enthusiastic grin before he looked back at the TARDIS. "Anyway, first things first; let's see what we've got right now, then I can get on with filling you in on everything that's been going on since you were stuck back there…"  
  
"So…" Amy asked, stuck for anything to say to the robot dog and wanting to tackle one issue before things went any further, "after all that… will you make her talk again?"  
  
"Can't; she doesn't think that way," the Doctor said briefly, in an abrupt manner that Amy quickly recognised meant that he didn't want to talk about that topic in depth; it was hard enough for him to essentially lose his people all over again without being reminded that he'd lost what would probably be the only chance he'd ever have to talk to his ship, even if she was still here…  
  
"I'm… I'm sorry she died," she said at last, lost for anything better to say to her friend in a state like this; K-9 was sitting silently beside her, evidently sensing that this wasn't a time to ask for clarification. "I mean, I know she's the TARDIS, and obviously the TARDIS is still… _alive_ … but… I don't know, seeing her go like that… it just… _gets_ to me…"  
  
"Letting it get to you; you know what that's called?" the Doctor said, scratching the back of his neck before smiling at her. "Being alive; best thing there is. Being alive right now, that's all that counts."  
  
With that said, he shrugged and turned back to the console. "Anyway, just got some work to do re-installing the firewalls so that doesn't happen again, and then… well, the Eye of Orion's restful, if you like restful. I can never really get the hang of restful. What do you think, dear? Where shall we go this time…?"  
  
He paused as he turned around to see Amy smiling wistfully at him.  
  
"Look at you," Amy said, trying not to think about the deeper meaning behind what she was saying to him now; even if he could never see her that way, bringing _that_ up at a time like this would just embarrass him. "It's always you and her, isn't it? Long after the rest of us have gone, a boy and his box, off to see the universe."  
  
"You say that like it's a bad thing," the Doctor said, shaking his head bemusedly as he smiled at her. "Honestly, it's the best thing there is."  
  
Patting the console affectionately, he shrugged and turned back to the matter at hand. "Oh, by the way, House deleted the bedrooms, so I'll need you to just help me make sure I got everything right; maybe we can even whip up a room for K-9 somewhere…"  
  
"Room unnecessary for this unit, Master," K-9 interjected.  
  
"Allow me to indulge a whim, eh, boy?" the Doctor said, grinning down at the dog as his fingers flew over the console, Amy unable to hold back her smile.  
  
The Doctor was all too obviously trying to distract himself from the memory of what he'd lost during the last few hours, but if that was how he chose to cope, Amy would let him; there were worse ways to handle grief, after all…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To those wondering, K-9 was originally sent to the TARDIS by Romana with the goal of assassinating the Doctor in the hope of eliminating the Grandfather, but he was trapped behind a wall when the ship was reconstructing itself; since Gallifrey has fallen and the Doctor has regenerated so many times since then that he's clearly never going to be the Grandfather who destroyed it, K-9 can disregard those orders as there's no reason for him to kill the Doctor any more.


	14. Anomalous Artwork

An art gallery wouldn't have been Amy's first choice of destination- when you could travel in time and space, seeing pictures of things didn't entirely compare to being able to visit them in person- but as she walked alongside the Doctor, she had to admit that she appreciated the value of it; there was something very compelling about the artwork around them. After seeing everything that the human race could accomplish as a group in the future, with such technological marvels as Poseidon Eight and Starship UK, it was almost nice to see what people in the past could achieve on an individual level, such as the tour guide's current observations on the quantity of work that Vincent van Gogh had produced in the summer before his death.

Amy slightly regretted that K9 couldn't come along, but she had to concede to the Doctor's arguments against it; the robot dog wasn't exactly inconspicuous at the best of the times, and with the Doctor's planned upgrades still a work in progress, K9 had been forced to remain in the TARDIS for the moment (Although the Doctor had assured her that he'd take them somewhere where their new companion wouldn't attract as much attention as soon as he was ready; so far he still had to finish amending K9's power supply problems).

" _Very_ nice work, aren't they?" she said, trying to take her mind off their new robot dog by studying a rather nice painting of a church; she might be a time-traveller now, but just because the Doctor laughed at archaeologists didn't mean he couldn't appreciate history in the aftermath.

"Very," the Doctor noted. "Other cultures can come up with their own more advanced art, but there's something to be said for the simplicity of this kind of work; you can almost feel his hand painting it right in front of you, carving the colours into shapes... Wait a minute…"

"What?" Amy asked, suddenly anxious as the Doctor leaned forward to examine the painted church more closely. "Something wrong?"

"Look at that," the Doctor said, indicating the painting. "There, in the window of the church; it's something very not good indeed…"

Glancing at the window the Doctor was indicating, Amy could just see what the Doctor was indicating; a small dark figure, hard to make out given its size and the materials used when the picture was created, but it looked something like a bird with a glowing yellow eye, obviously far too large to be from Earth and giving off a very foreboding impression.

"Is that… a face?" she asked uncertainly.

"Yes, and not a nice face at all," the Doctor confirmed grimly. "I know evil when I see it and I see it in that window…"

Glancing around, the Doctor hurried over to the older man giving the lecture to the other guests, pulling out his psychic paper to address the tour group as he did so. "Excuse me, if I can just interrupt for one second- sorry, everyone; routine inspection for the Ministry of Art and… Artiness. So, um…"

"Doctor Black," the man said.

"Yes, that's right," the Doctor said, smiling briefly at the seemingly older man before indicating the painting he and Amy had just been examining. "Do you know when that picture of the church was painted?"

"Ah, what an interesting question," Doctor Black said. "Most people…"

"I'm going to have to hurry you," the Doctor interjected. "When was it?"

"Exactly?"

"As exactly as you can, without a long speech, if poss; I'm in a hurry."

"Well," Doctor Black said, clearly bemused but nevertheless remaining professional, "in that case, probably somewhere between the 1st and 3rd of June."

"What year?"

"1890," Doctor Black replied. "Less than a year before he… killed himself."

"Thank you, sir, very helpful indeed," the Doctor said, nodding politely at Black before turning back to grab Amy by the arm. "We need to go."

"Because of a picture?" Amy asked, lost at the sudden change of topic as she followed the Doctor out of the gallery.

"Art can wait; this is life and death," the Doctor said firmly. "We need to talk to Vincent van Gogh before something bad happens to history!"

* * *

The subsequent trip to 1890 was a bit more rushed than Amy had expected, but considering the nature of the world they lived in, she supposed that it was only to be expected that the Doctor would take extra precautions if anything potentially dangerous to history came up. The fact that van Gogh's history was still intact after he witnessed whatever was in that church might have been enough to stop the Doctor panicking in the past, but with the Faction's existence apparently making history more 'malleable' than it had been, he wanted to make sure one way or the other.  
  
"Right," the Time Lord said as they left the TARDIS, K9 remaining in the ship as both a guard-dog and to help them remain inconspicuous. "Here's the plan; we find Vincent, and he leads us straight to the church and our nasty friend."  
  
"Easy enough," Amy said with a smile.  
  
"Well, no, I suspect nothing will be easy with Mr Van Gogh," the Doctor said as they walked along the alley they'd landed in. "Now, he'll probably be in the local café… sort of orangey light, chairs and tables outside…"  
  
"Like this?" Amy asked, pulling out her museum guidebook and indicating a painting identified as the ' _The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night_ ', which exactly matched the scene in front of them.  
  
"Precisely," the Doctor said, smiling back at her before walking up to the café, where staff were starting to clear the outside tables. "Good evening; does the name Vincent Van Gogh ring a bell?"  
  
"Don't mention that man to me," a man said, his voice low and his tone dismissive as he turned to walk back into the café.  
  
"Excuse me," the Doctor said, deciding not to pay too much attention to that response as he turned to a woman who seemed to be one of the waitresses, "do you know Vincent van Gogh?"  
  
"Unfortunately," the waitress said.  
  
"Unfortunately?" Amy repeated curiously.  
  
"He's drunk, he's mad and he never pays his bills," the waitress clarified.  
  
"Good painter, though, eh?" the Doctor suggested, only to be met with laughter from the staff and the other patrons. Lost for anything else to say at the moment, the Doctor sat down at a nearby table, before the sound of an argument drew their attention back to the café as the man who'd walked in earlier came out carrying a canvas, followed by another man.  
  
"Come on!" the new man was protesting, instantly recognisable to the time-travellers as Vincent van Gogh. "One painting for one drink; that's not a bad deal."  
  
"It wouldn't be a bad deal if the painting were any good," the café owner said, holding up the canvas in question in front of Vincent's face as he spoke. "I can't hang that up on my walls; it'd scare the customers half to death. It's bad enough having you in here in person, let alone looming over the customers day and night in a stupid hat. You pay money or you get out."  
  
"I'll pay if you like," the Doctor put in.  
  
"What?" the owner said, looking at the Time Lord in surprise.  
  
"Well, if you like, I'll pay for the drink," the Doctor clarified. "Or I'll pay for the painting and you can use the money to pay for the drink."  
  
"Exactly who are you?" van Gogh asked, looking suspiciously at the seated Time Lord.  
  
"I'm… new in town," the Doctor said; best to keep his options open until he had a better idea of what role would benefit their current investigation the most.  
  
"Well, in that case, you don't know three things," van Gogh said firmly. "One, I pay for my own drinks, thank you." Everyone else laughed at that statement, but the artist continued. "Two, no-one ever buys any of my paintings or they would be laughed out of town, so if you want to stay in town, I suggest you keep your cash to yourself. And three, your friend's cute, but you should keep your big nose out of other people's business. Come on, just one more drink. I'll pay tomorrow."  
  
"No," the owner said.  
  
"Or, on the other hand, slightly more compassionately, yes?" van Gogh asked  
  
"Or, on the other hand, to protect my business from madmen, no."  
  
"Or-"  
  
" _Or_ ," Amy interjected, stepping forward with a firm glare at the two men, "I could buy a bottle of wine, which I could then share with _whoever_ I choose."  
  
"That could be good," van Gogh noted.  
  
"That's good by me," the owner added.  
  
"Good," Amy said, before she walked into the café, the Doctor smiling as he got up to follow her.  
  
That was one of the things he appreciated most about Amy; she had a brilliant knack for defusing potentially awkward situations and making everyone like her, whereas he generally found it easier to get people to listen to him once he'd both confirmed that there was danger and proved that he wasn't the one responsible for it…

* * *

"That accent of yours," van Gogh said, as they sat inside the café drinking the newly-purchased wine. "You from Holland like me?"  
  
"Yes," the Doctor said, Amy remaining quiet as she recalled the Doctor's old warnings about accepting the translation circuit's 'idiosyncrasies'. "She's Amelia Pond, and I'm the Doctor."  
  
"I knew it!" van Gogh said.  
  
"Sorry?" the Doctor asked, confused at that reaction.  
  
"My brother's always sending doctors," the artist continued contemptuously, which at least ended the Doctor's momentary concern that he was making his second visit to Vincent van Gogh before his first, "but you won't be able to help."  
  
"No, not _that_ kind of doctor," the Doctor said, trying to change tactics by indicating the painting next to Vincent. "That's incredible, don't you think, Amy?"  
  
"Absolutely," Amy said, nodding in approval, only just remembering to stop herself saying any more; they would be attracting enough questions from van Gogh without her dropping unintentional hints about their real history.  
  
"Your hair is orange," van Gogh said suddenly, looking thoughtfully at Amy's hair.  
  
"Yes," Amy replied, leaning forward to look at the painting. "So's yours."  
  
"Yes," van Gogh replied, leaning forward as he looked at her. "It was more orange, but now is, of course, less…"  
  
"So, Vincent," the Doctor said, bringing the matter back to their reason for being here- he was _not_ trying to stop a famous artist looking at his friend; he was just focusing on what mattered- "painted any churches recently? Any churchy plans? Are churches, chapels, religiousy stuff like that, something you'd like to get into? You know, fairly soon?"  
  
"Well, there is one church I'm thinking of painting when the weather is right…" the artist admitted.  
  
"That is very good news," the Doctor said, before screams of murder from outside the café halted further discussion. Leaping to his feet, the Doctor ran towards the screams, asking the painter to accompany him and Amy without even thinking about it; for the moment, Vincent was the key to this situation, which meant they had to stick with him. Hurrying towards an alley outside the café, the body of a young woman was quickly visible lying on the cobbles, a group of locals already gathered around her.  
  
"She's been ripped to shreds!" a man yelled.  
  
"Please, let me look," the Doctor said, hurrying through the crowd. "I'm a doctor."  
  
He briefly felt bad about the slight lie- he was a doctor of many things, but he did tend to let his medical skills slip when he had other things to focus on- but when he saw the body, he could at least be sure that there was nothing he could do in this case; she had clearly been too badly injured by whatever had done this (Which raised the question of what had done this, considering that these wounds didn't fit anything that should be in this timeline)…  
  
When the victim's mother appeared to wave them all away, the Doctor was actually selfishly grateful for the opportunity to make a retreat; he'd seen enough to confirm that they were dealing with something that shouldn't be on Earth at this time, and right now he and Amy needed an excuse to spend time with Vincent if they were going to find that church…


	15. A Day with Vincent

The Doctor would be the first person to admit that he was never very good at doing nothing; it was one of the handicaps of the Time Lords having long ago rid themselves of the need to even sleep very often (He had good rests when he did sleep, but he so rarely needed to do it). Making their way to Vincent van Gogh's house with the half-drunk artist had been an experience even without his own efforts to keep an eye out for something that might have been the creature responsible for that attack, but once they'd reached the small house, filled with various unfinished paintings that would one day be some of the most famous works of art in existence, there wasn't much for either him or Amy to do but wait as Vincent settled down.

It was actually rather sad to see Vincent's work as it lay around his house; he was convinced that he was the only person who'd ever appreciate his paintings, and yet he'd still done all of this work, certain he'd get nothing back in return, trying to explore the world beyond what the average person could see.

The more time he spent here, the more the Doctor was glad that he'd decided to come; Vincent van Gogh was a distinct example of why he liked humanity so much, for their ability to see beyond the world they lived in and appreciate the wonder of what lay beyond their pre-existing boundaries, the artist currently sitting by the fire as he spoke about his view on the wonders of the universe…

The moment of peace was interrupted when Amy suddenly yelled from outside, the Doctor leaping from his chair to run for his companion. Arriving in the yard of Vincent's cottage, the Doctor found Amy on her knees, looking anxiously around herself before she fixed her gaze on him.

"What happened?" he asked, crouching down beside her.

"I was looking at the paintings when something hit me from behind," Amy said, wincing as she checked the back of her head while standing back up.

"It's OK," the Doctor said, taking a moment to assess the surroundings. "He's gone and we're here-"

"NO!" Vincent yelled, raising his arms in panic as he backed away from something.

"Take it easy," the Doctor said, looking anxiously at the artist. "Take it easy!"

"What's happening?" Amy asked, as Vincent picked up a large gardening fork and began waving it in the air before him. "What's he doing?"

"I don't know…" the Doctor began, before Vincent suddenly charged forward, running past them yelling at them to run as he began to lash out at something. Under other circumstances, the Doctor would have attributed Vincent's actions to some kind of fit, but even without considering the Faction and their ability to manipulate perception, he knew that there were other possibilities.

"Get inside!" the Time Lord yelled at Amy, quickly making his decision as he ran over to Vincent, still lashing out at something. "Easy, Vincent, easy! It's me; it's the Doctor! It's the Doctor; look, nobody else is here-"

"Look out!" Vincent yelled, shoving the Doctor to the side as he felt something fly over him, followed by the sound of ripping canvas as something damaged one of the paintings.

"I can't see anything!" Amy yelled anxiously. "What is it?"

"That is a good question," the Doctor said, looking up as Vincent continued to try and hit something that neither the Doctor or Amy could see, the Time Lord grabbing a stout stick before he hurried over to join Vincent. "Let me help you."

"You can see him too?" Vincent asked.

"Yes… ish…" the Doctor began, before acknowledging that this wasn't going to get him anywhere. "Well, no, not really."

He was saved from having to make any awkward arguments when another roar was followed by something striking the Doctor to throw him over a nearby table; landing at Vincent's feet might have still been embarrassing, but at least he didn't have to worry about following up on fake claims.

"You couldn't see him?" Vincent asked.

"No," the Doctor said, hoping that he wouldn't have to follow that up as he began to wave the stick around. As Vincent lashed out once again, the Doctor heard a roar of pain before something ran out of the gate, leaving the Doctor and Amy looking uncertainly at Vincent until the artist nodded that the creature had gone.

Whatever they were dealing with here, at least the Doctor had confirmation that it was an alien entity; the only problem was that they were dealing with something that apparently couldn't be seen by anyone but Vincent, and with no way of knowing why the artist could see it and nobody else could, that would make identifying it _very_ difficult.

* * *

The subsequent night's work proved to be far trickier than the Doctor had anticipated. With nothing more to go on than a picture Vincent had painted of the creature, the Doctor's only real option to carry out a more detailed search was to take the drawing back to the TARDIS and run a search using the ship's database while Amy kept an eye on Vincent, using an old gift from Innocet and Glospin that he'd never used before (Innocet meant well, but anything from Glospin was automatically tainted in the Doctor's view even before he'd killed Quences).  
  
The resulting scan had displayed a few possibilities, but Vincent van Gogh's artistic style didn't really lend itself to creating a completely accurate version of the creature he'd seen, so the Doctor had been left only with vague guesses at things like parrots or polar bears, which naturally failed to give him any real idea what he was up against.  
  
He'd managed to use the device to identify the creature when it had sneaked up behind him after he left the TARDIS, but he'd needed to run away before he could get a clearer scan to avoid being attacked, and he'd been forced to order K9 to remain in the TARDIS. The dog meant well, but without knowing how the creature made itself invisible to everyone else, he didn't want to risk his recovered friend by asking him to try and fight it, and he didn't have the time to try and connect K9's sensors to the device he'd dug up when it had been so long since his last serious bit of robotics work.  
  
On the bright side, now that he was back at Vincent's cottage, at least he'd managed to have some peace of mind; Amy had even spent some time setting up sunflowers to try and brighten Vincent's mood, even if it had met with a mixed response from the artist due to his thoughts on the flowers as being between life and death. He'd managed to confirm with Vincent that the printout of the creature he'd produced was accurate enough, which allowed him to identify this entity as a space scavenger known as a Krafayis, but he still had the problem of how to find it before it hurt anyone else.  
  
Still, that was the advantage of being a time-traveller; since they knew that the Krafayis had been in the church that Vincent had been planning to paint, and since they were just dealing with an animal acting on instinct rather than a thinking being whose plans could have been changed by their interference, all they had to do was go to that church and wait for it to show up.  
  
He just wished that they could deal with Vincent's fragile mental state as easily as their planned hunt for the Krafayis should be, but there was only so much that the Doctor could do in this kind of situation. Vincent's condition was a tragedy, but with the Faction dominating so much of history already, the Doctor couldn't risk giving Vincent any kind of professional help in case it set off a difficult chain reaction; he still wasn't clear how killing Lee Harvey Oswald before he killed Kennedy could have eliminated him, but he'd had no reason to distrust the Master's temporal calculations, and he didn't have the time to work out the fine details himself.  
  
As much as he admired Vincent van Gogh as an artist, with the Faction active and no Time Lords to restrain the consequences of their actions, it was easier to stick to the plan and leave Vincent to cope on his own.  
  
"I'm… sorry you're so sad," Amy said, looking sympathetically at the artist as she walked alongside him, the artist carrying his easel and palette while Amy carried the canvas and paint case.  
  
"But I'm not," Vincent said, shrugging slightly as he walked. "Sometimes these moods torture me for weeks, for months. But I'm good now. If the Doctor can soldier on, then so can Vincent Van Gogh."  
  
"You noticed, then?" the Doctor said, looking inquiringly at Vincent, maintaining a neutral tone as he realised what the other man was talking about.  
  
"Your grief is buried, but it's still there," Vincent said, looking solemnly back at him. "How did you learn to move past what happened?"  
  
"By focusing on what I have left," the Doctor replied; if he couldn't do anything to help Vincent in the long term, he could at least be honest with him right now. "It was difficult at first- I admit that I spent most of my time hiding away to avoid being hurt again- but after I met Amy a few years ago… well, it's been getting easier."  
  
"I understand," Vincent said, looking at the Doctor solemnly.  
  
"Thank you," the Doctor said, before he turned to look at the two humans. "OK, so we need a plan; when the creatures returns-"  
  
"We shall fight him again," Vincent said.  
  
"Well, yes, tick," the Doctor acknowledged. "But last night we were lucky; Amy could have been killed. So this time, for a start, we have to make sure I can see him, too."  
  
"And how are we meant to do that, suddenly?" Amy asked.  
  
"The answer's in this box," the Doctor replied, tapping the case. "I had an excellent, if smelly, godmother."  
  
He was saved from further explaining that issue when a funeral procession passed them by, Vincent identifying it as a funeral for the girl they'd seen killed by the creature the night before. The grim stare the mother gave Vincent as she passed them by was worrying, but the Doctor knew that reacting to it wouldn't get them anywhere right now; their priority had to be to deal with the creature, not worry about defending Vincent from local accusations.  
  
When they finally reached the church after walking for a while longer, all that the Doctor and Amy could do as Vincent started to paint was sit down and wait for him to see something interesting (The Doctor briefly wondered why Vincent had just painted the creature in the original history, but supposed that he could have mistaken it for a statue inside the church). In one regard, it was fascinating to see an artist at work, but on the other hand, the reason that he Doctor had never been able to get into painting as a means of occupying his time was that it would take too long to produce something worthwhile; he just didn't have the patience to sit around and look at the same thing for so long, even if he admired the final results of those who did.  
  
Still, there was nothing that could be done at this point but wait and see when the creature would show up…

* * *

"Is this how time normally passes?" the Doctor asked, the sun having started to set a while ago even as Vincent continued to paint in the dimming light. "Really slowly… in the right order…"  
  
He'd always managed to keep himself occupied with _something_ during his past periods when he was on Earth for a long-term reason or another- his exile in his third incarnation had given him time to work on the TARDIS and assist UNIT, and he'd spent most of his first few years in this body training Amy- but right now all he had to do was think while Vincent van Gogh painted, and he was getting tired of it, particularly when he felt like there was something he _should_ be thinking of that just wasn't occurring to him.  
  
"If there's one thing I can't stand," he groaned as he got back to his feet, "it's an unpunctual alien attack." His frustration voiced, the Doctor began pacing again, walking around behind Vincent to avoid distracting the artist.  
  
"Are you OK?" Amy asked, as she walked over to join him. "You seem a bit… nervous."  
  
"It's not the Faction," the Doctor replied in a low voice, wanting to get that out in the open before he said anything else. "I don't know what it is, but there's something about this that I can't _quite_ put my finger on…"  
  
"There!" Vincent said, pointing his brush at something. "He's at the window!"  
  
"Where?" the Doctor asked, hurrying over to see what the artist was pointing at.  
  
"There, on the right," the Dutch painter clarified.  
  
"As I thought," the Doctor said, expressing more confidence than he felt. "Come on; we're going in."  
  
He thought for a moment about asking Vincent to stay behind, but decided against it; Amy had trained for so long during their time in Leadworth that she'd never accept an order to stay behind unless he could give her a better reason than 'it's dangerous', and leaving Vincent alone out here could be even more dangerous.  
  
"Stay close, keep an eye out, and don't do anything stupid," he said at last, glancing between the two. "Let's go."  
  
With that instruction given, he led the way towards the church, the other two close behind him as he moved carefully; the creature might be invisible unless he was able to aim this device just right, but that didn't mean he wouldn't hear it if he was careful enough. His provisional plan might just be to try and stun the creature with the sonic, but he was fairly confident that it should be enough; he'd seen nothing to suggest that he was dealing with anything more than an animal. Waving a hand to make Amy and Vincent stay back, he adjusted the device's mirror as he slowly walked inside the church, studying the surroundings in one direction while Vincent followed him inside to look in a different direction, Amy standing between them ready to move if she had to.  
  
"Watch out!" Vincent suddenly yelled over at the Doctor, prompting the Time Lord to duck as he felt something fly past his head; their opponent might be invisible, but there was definitely something there that could be sensed under the right circumstances.  
  
"What do we do?" Amy asked anxiously, prompting another roar from the creature.  
  
"Where is it?" the Doctor asked, raising the screwdriver as he looked anxiously at Vincent. "We've got it trapped now; we might be able to work with this!"  
  
"It's over in the corner," Vincent said, indicating in the appropriate direction. "It's moving around the room, feeling its way around the walls…"  
  
"Where?" the Doctor repeated, looking urgently at the other man.  
  
"There!" Vincent said, indicating a corner of the room. Raising the screwdriver in the direction that Vincent had indicated, the Doctor triggered a sonic burst, only for something to let out a loud roar and charge towards them. Before the Doctor could do more than try and dive to safety, Vincent had raised his easel and charged forward, the points on the end of the wooden frame striking something and prompting a more agonised squeal from the target. For a moment, Vincent appeared to be floating in the air as a loud roar filled the room, the artist clutching his easel as it apparently impaled the creature, before the artist released his grip and the easel seemingly moved to hover in an upright position.  
  
"It just… ran into it," Vincent said, turning to look at the Doctor in confusion. "Why would it do that?"  
  
"Ran into it…" the Doctor repeated, his mind racing for a moment before he cursed in exasperation. "Oh, I am _so_ stupid!"  
  
"Doctor, this isn't the time to re-evaluate your ego-!" Amy began.  
  
"No, I am really stupid and I'm growing old," the Doctor said, staring at the seemingly suspended easel in frustration. "Why did it always attack but never eat its victims? And why was it abandoned by its pack and left here to die? Why was it feeling its way helplessly around the walls of the room? It couldn't see; it was relying on its hearing so much because it was _blind_!"  
  
"Oh," Amy said, following the Doctor's gaze with renewed sympathy and understanding for what had been their opponent just a few moments ago.  
  
"Oh no…" Vincent said, standing back to stare at the fallen creature; even if the Doctor couldn't see the creature, the easel had almost certainly given it a fatal wound, considering the position of the object and the potential depth of any injuries it could have inflicted. "He wasn't without mercy at all; he was without sight. I didn't mean that to happen; I only meant to wound it, I never meant to…"  
  
"He's trying to say something," the Doctor noted, kneeling down beside the easel to listen to the creature's strange noises; the TARDIS's animal language translators might be broken, and they'd never been very reliable even when they were working properly, but he could still get the gist of it if he concentrated.  
  
"What is it?" Vincent asked.  
  
"I'm having trouble making it out," the Doctor admitted, "but I think he's saying, "I'm afraid. I'm afraid"."  
  
With nothing else to do to comfort the creature, the Doctor reached out to stroke its invisible body. "There, there. It's OK. You'll be fine. Ssh…"  
  
As the easel stopped its faint movement as the creature breathed its last, the Doctor could only bow his head at the scale of what they'd just done.  
  
"He was frightened…and he lashed out," Vincent said. "Like humans, who lash out when they're frightened. Like the villagers who scream at me. Like the children who throw stones at me."  
  
"Sometimes," the Doctor said grimly, "winning is no fun at all."  
  
There was nothing else to say after that observation. Standing back up, the Doctor placed a comforting hand around Amy's shoulders and led her from the church, Vincent close behind them.

* * *

Looking back, the Doctor was never entirely sure what had prompted his decision to offer Vincent a trip to the future. The artist had been a good friend and surprisingly ally during their time in this era, he had appreciated the opportunity to see the world through Vincent's eyes as he talked them through his view of the stars above them, and he couldn't accept the offer of a painting as everything in Vincent's collection had to be saved for future display, but taking the man into the future would have been a risk even if the Faction _weren't_ a prominent concern for him…  
  
On the other hand, he had said himself that Vincent's mental state was exceptionally fragile even by the standards of Amy's time, and what he was planning to offer was a comparatively quick patch over a very serious problem that would mean a lot to the artist at the time. It was a small thing  
  
Showing the TARDIS to Vincent was straightforward enough with the Krayfis encounter still fresh in the artist's mind, and he'd even been willing to accept the revelation that they'd travelled in time even if the Doctor had to direct his attention to where it needed to be, but it was when he was shown to the appropriate wing of the _Musee D'Orsay_ that the Doctor knew Vincent appreciated his gift.  
  
For a man who'd spent his life painting with no guarantee that anyone would appreciate his work, seeing everything he'd done laid out in this museum had to be an incredible sight. For a moment, the Doctor enjoyed seeing Vincent take in the number of people studying his work, until he decided to give Vincent a more explicit example of how he was viewed by history.  
  
"Doctor Black," he said, walking over to the tour guide as he was talking to a group of children, "we met a few days ago; I asked you about the church at Auvers."  
  
"Oh yes, glad to be of help…" the seemingly older man said uncertainly, clearly remembering the Doctor's unusual query as the Time Lord led him to the centre of the room, near where Vincent was standing.  
  
"Anyway," the Doctor said, "I just wondered, between you and me, in one hundred words, where do you think Van Gogh rates in the history of art?"  
  
"Well, big question," Doctor Black said, as Vincent turned to look at the other man. "But, to me, Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all. Certainly, the most popular, great painter of all time, the most beloved. His command of colour, the most magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world - no-one had ever done it before. Perhaps no-one ever will again. To my mind, that strange, wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world's greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived."  
  
Glancing over at Vincent, the Doctor was uncertain how to feel when he saw the artist crying as he listened to Doctor Black's words; he'd hoped that Vincent would be affected by the news of how he was seen in the future, but he hadn't expected _that_ kind of reaction…  
  
"Vincent," he said, giving the other man a comforting hug. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry… is it too much?"  
  
"No," Vincent said, shaking his head as he smiled. "They are tears of joy."  
  
With that statement, he walked over to Doctor Black and gave him a hug, kissing the older man on both cheeks. "Thank you, sir. Thank you."  
  
"You're welcome," Doctor Black said, looking bemusedly at Vincent as the Doctor and Amy led him out of the museum. "You're welcome."  
  
It was a brief thing in the grand scheme of things, but as he and Amy said their goodbyes to Vincent back in his own time, the artist grinning with a new appreciation for life and his place in history, the Doctor was satisfied that he'd done the best he could in the circumstances.  
  
Maybe Vincent van Gogh would still commit suicide a year later, and maybe there was nothing he could do to help the artist he'd come to regard as a friend without giving the Faction the chance to gain a new foothold, but as he would tell Amy later, life was all about the good things and the bad things, and they had unquestionably added to the good things that Vincent had experienced in his lifetime.


	16. Pleasant Reunion, Shocking Request

"And you're _sure_ we couldn't have done anything else?" Amy asked as they returned to the TARDIS after their return trip to the museum had confirmed that Vincent had still committed suicide. "I mean, I know that the Faction are a problem, but-"

"It's not just the Faction, Pond," the Doctor said, looking apologetically at her. "Believe me, I wish we could have done more to help Vincent, but his death is a personal fixed point in time; we can't change it without risking a wide and unpredictable range of consequences. My own experience has shown me that, while some details can be changed if you're careful enough and apply pressure to the right area, people will generally stick to their original paths without a significant push."

"So… Vincent was just _destined_ to die then?" Amy asked.

"Maybe he had to die to achieve his fame," the Doctor said, looking apologetically at his companion. "My old friend Evelyn and I once learned that Mozart had originally been repeatedly cloned by various future time-travellers so that he was still alive in your time; people remembered him because he'd been around for so long rather than the quality of his work."

"Mozart?" Amy repeated in surprise. "Someone kept cloning _Mozart_?"

"Actually, the original Mozart was saved by a clone of himself who injected him with a self-regenerating fluid that would keep him going forever, and by the time of what would have been his hundredth birthday he felt that everything had been going downhill," the Doctor confirmed. "Evelyn and I had a talk with the clone who'd saved Mozart's life and he revealed that his goal had been to reduce Mozart to obscurity so that he'd never be cloned in the future, so we compromised by going back in time to edit Mozart's final requiem; we took out the last few pages so that it wasn't quite as good as it could have been, and therefore he wouldn't inspire the same level of fanatical devotion in his fans."

"Ah," Amy said, nodding in understanding. "So… you're saying we couldn't have saved Vincent without something like that happening to him?"

"Maybe not that _exactly_ , but the point still stands," the Doctor said. "We could be sure that we'd save Vincent's life _then_ , but we can't be sure that it would make his life any better in the long run. Maybe his paintings would never have attracted the same level of interest without the tragedy, maybe his own pain would have become too much for him if he'd continued… sometimes, as tragic as someone's final fate is, all we can do is give them a few good moments."

Amy could only sit in silence as she contemplated the Doctor's explanation.

As much as she trusted the Time Lord's guidance- with the Faction as an example of what could happen if Time was meddled with, she certainly wasn't going to ignore his warnings- it still seemed so unfair that such a brilliant man as Vincent van Gogh had to die like that…

"I guess we just have to focus on what you said," she said, sighing sadly as she leant against the railings. "The good things don't outweigh the bad things in someone's life, but that doesn't make the good things unimportant…"

"Exactly," the Doctor said. "Sometimes we can only change the fine details, but those details can add up to a lot over time; we just need to pick our moment."

Amy wasn't sure what she would have said next, but she was saved from talking when something began beeping on the TARDIS console, drawing her and the Doctor's attention to something else.

"What is it?" she asked, looking anxiously at her friend as he walked up to study the console. "Is it a warning?"

"Not directly," the Doctor mused, his expression contemplative as he studied the console monitor. "It's a message…"

"A message?" Amy asked, looking at the Doctor with sudden apprehension. "Is this like that Time Lord distress thing House used? Just, no offence to K9, but I'd rather not go through _that_ again…"

"No offence taken, Mistress," K9 said from the floor near the control console. "Incident involving the entity known as House was not a pleasant experience for any of us."

"It's not like that anyway," the Doctor said, grimly studying the readouts on the TARDIS monitor. "This seems more… personal…"

Before Amy could ask what he meant by that, the Doctor had set the ship in motion, dashing around the console while simultaneously trying to keep an eye on the screen until the ship came to a halt, as though he was afraid that the words would disappear or change if he stopped looking at them. Lost for anything else to do when the Doctor looked like this, Amy just kept a tight grip on the railings around the console, which swiftly proved to be a wise decision when a particularly violent shake nearly knocked her off her feet.

"That's odd…"

"No offence, but we _always_ seem to shake like that-" Amy began.

"Not like that," the Doctor said, his eyes narrowing as he studied the screen. "According to this, that particular rough patch was the result of us passing through a chrono-dimensional barrier…"

"A what?" Amy asked.

"Complex bit of temporal technology; basically, it moves everything inside the barrier slightly outside of history so that it won't be affected if someone tries to alter the past," the Doctor explained. "It's not perfect, of course- for one thing, you're only guaranteed protection from whatever changed history if you stay inside the barrier for the rest of your life so that the universe won't 'rewrite' you to fit the new version- but if someone felt the need to set something like that up, why program it to allow the TARDIS in…?"

He stared at the screen for a few moments, expression grimly contemplative, before sighing as he looked back at Amy. "Well, we're not going to answer either of those questions hanging around here, and everything seems safe enough; shall we go out and look?"

"Why not?" Amy said, smiling to cover her apprehension; the Doctor might be worried, but he wouldn't suggest that they leave if it wasn't safe to do so.

When she emerged from the TARDIS, she had to wonder if the Doctor had made a mistake. His comment about the chrono-dimensional barrier had led her to expect that they would be landing somewhere interesting, but their current location looked more like a war-zone than anything else. The TARDIS had materialised in a battered junction of two corridors, with a vibration under her feet that Amy had come to recognise from her past travels as the sign of them being on a spaceship. There were a few dents and burn damage on the corridors that suggested there'd been a firefight of some sort in this ship, but there was no sign of any bodies, so somebody must have survived to clear this all away...

"Where is this?" Amy asked, looking back at the Doctor as she noted the anxious expression on her friend's face.

"I'm not sure…" the Doctor said, shaking his head uncertainly. "I've been somewhere like this before, but not in _this_ situation… maybe when a ship like this was new…"

"So," an unfamiliar voice said, "you're the new crew, then?"

Turning around to look at the speaker, Amy's eyes widened as she saw the speaker walk around one corner. The woman in question was of an indeterminate age, but she was definitely at least a few years older than Amy herself, and had long light brown hair, pulled back in a pony-tail, and dark glasses over a serious face that somehow looked like it was made for laughing, dressed in a tight dark jumpsuit that showed off every curve.

" _ACE_!" the Doctor grinned, grabbing the young woman in an enthusiastic hug, leaving Amy feeling as though she'd just been dropped into the Arctic ocean.

The Doctor knew someone like… _that_?

In her simple jeans and long jacket, compared to this woman's form-fitting black outfit, Amy suddenly felt so plain…

"What… Professor?" the young woman said, stepping back from the hug to look at the Doctor incredulously. "That's _you_?"

"You knew that I could regenerate-" the Doctor pointed out with a grin.

"Yeah, but that's who you _were_ ; I can't believe you're… _this_ ," the woman said, indicating him with what Amy could only think of as amused indignation.

"What's wrong with 'this'?" the Doctor grinned. "It's a lot more cool than that question-mark motif I had back then."

"I actually liked that umbrella, you know," the woman retorted, before she looked past the Doctor to smile at Amy. "And who's this?"

"Oh, this is Amelia Pond," the Doctor said, smiling as he placed a casual arm around Amy's shoulders. "Amy, this is Ace, an old protégé of mine."

"Protégé, Professor?" Ace asked, grinning teasingly at him.

"Well, we could go into detail about how you were the student and daughter I never really knew I wanted, how I was the dad you weren't looking for and weren't expecting, how we made a bigger mess of our relationships than most biological families but still ended up coming together in the end…" the Doctor said (Amy knew that she should probably feel weird about hearing the Doctor refer to someone as a daughter figure when the woman in question looked like she was slightly older than him, but right now she was just too relieved to hear that she didn't have competition).

"All right, all right, stop embarrassing me," Ace protested, even as the smile on her face made it clear that she didn't really mind what she was hearing. "You're a lot more… expressive this time around, aren't you?"

"Things just worked out that way," the Doctor shrugged, before he looked more seriously at the other woman. "Anyway, enough of that; what are you doing here? I checked the dates when we arrived; this seems a bit out of range of your Time Hopper…"

"I picked up this thing a few days back when it arrived in orbit above Paris," Ace explained. "I checked it out, but then it jumped away before I could do more than take a look around, and my hopper didn't have the range to get back on my own."

"So you called me here to help you get home?" the Doctor asked.

"That's the thing, Professor," Ace said, looking uncomfortably at the Doctor. "A lift back'd be useful, but you're _really_ not going to like why I really called you here…"

"Why not?" the Doctor asked with a smile. "It's not like you're working with the Daleks or anything crazy like that…"

The awkward expression on Ace's face was more of an answer than either of the other two needed.

"You're _working_ with the _Daleks_?" the Doctor said, staring at Ace in outrage. "Mortimus was bad enough-!"

"It's not like that; I told you, I was just in the wrong place and he scooped me up before I could get away!" Ace said, looking desperately at the Time Lord. "I'd have broken out as soon as I could and taken my chances, but he took my main power core and… well, he _really_ needs your help!"

"Hold on, 'he'?" the Doctor repeated, suddenly curious about Ace's word choice. "You're talking about Daleks and a 'he'… what are we talking about here?"

Looking down in shame, Ace walked over to the room's door and opened it, revealing another figure in the corridor outside. As the new figure emerged, Amy felt as though she was about to throw up. The creature's lower half was a black shape covered in golden half-spheres, with no sign of legs, and one mechanical hand on the end of its single mobile arm, the other arm apparently trapped under the device it was 'sitting' in. Its face was the most twisted part of it; its brown skin looked as though it had been partly melted, and it had what seemed to be a vivid blue eye in the middle of its forehead, while the places where its actual eyes should be were nothing more than blank areas of skin.

" _Davros_ ," the Doctor spat, glaring at the thing before him in contempt.

"Doc-Tor," the… _thing_ said, looking at the Doctor with a slight smile on its face. "You have changed again, I see."

"And you've barely changed at all," the Doctor said, shaking his head as he studied the creature, even as he moved so that he was standing between Davros and the two women. "Honestly, all that effort to get yourself a new body and you _still_ can't get your legs back…"

"My DNA samples were corrupted-" Davros began to protest.

"Yeah, yeah, make all your excuses; if you couldn't have _my_ body or your own one at full health, you weren't satisfied with any of the alternatives, were you?" the Doctor said, shaking his head before he focused his glare on Davros. "Anyway, I'm here now; what did you want that was so important you dragged Ace here to find me?"

"I… require your help," Davros said, practically spitting the words out as he looked at the Doctor.

"Really?" the Doctor said, intrigued despite himself; given his history with Davros, he might doubt the other scientist's motives, but he knew enough to know that Davros wouldn't ask for help after history together unless he was sure he had no other choice. "To do what?"

"To save the Daleks."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In advance, I assure all readers that this is _not_ going to be an 'Asylum of the Daleks' rewrite; that was a good story, but with the Faction active, I have plans to create a far bigger threat for the Doctor to save the Daleks from…  
> For those fans wanting to know what Ace is doing here, to cut a long story short, in the Virgin New Adventures novel 'Set Piece', she left the Seventh Doctor to set up residence in nineteenth-century Paris, using a 'time hopper'- essentially a time-travelling motorbike- to keep an eye on various rifts in time and space around this area that might draw in dangerous phenomenon; she can travel in time via these rifts, but she can't go too far from Earth, which is why she couldn't help Davros on her own (And I will establish why Davros needs help in the next chapter)  
> On another note, the Doctor's comment about Davros wanting his body is a reference to the exceptional audio adventure 'The Curse of Davros'; as part of a plan to change history, Davros and the Sixth Doctor briefly switched bodies, with the Doctor noting that he's impressed that Davros is able to endure the agony of his twisted form, but the Doctor's eventually able to reclaim his body


	17. The Dark Request

"Save the Daleks," the Doctor repeated, staring solemnly at his enemy.

"Yes," Davros repeated.

"Save the most evil and twisted race I have ever encountered in all my travels through time and space."

"Yes."

"Save the Daleks on the request of the most twistedly brilliant mind I've ever encountered?"

"Yes."

"Give me one good reason why I should," the Doctor practically spat as he loomed over Davros, now standing directly in front of his chair.

"Because you have done it before-" Davros began.

"There's a difference between killing someone and _not saving_ someone," the Doctor said, looking coldly at Davros. "I chose not to destroy your creations at their beginning because I wanted to believe that they could be better- a long shot, maybe- but I won't apologise for wanting to believe they _could_ be better- but if someone else has a good plan to destroy them-"

"The Daleks will not be destroyed," Davros corrected the Doctor. "Faction Paradox intend to go back to the beginning and reprogram the Daleks to serve them."

The Doctor's expression shifted to horror so quickly that Amy couldn't believe it.

"No…" he said, staring at Davros in shock. "He _wouldn't_ …"

"The Grandfather knows a great deal about my creations, Doctor, as you are well aware" Davros said, looking grimly at the Time Lord. "If the Faction's agents could find a means of travelling back to Skaro at the appropriate time, he could accomplish a great deal in a relatively short time…"

"How do you know about that?" Amy asked, looking curiously at the twisted monster, forcing down her initial feelings of revulsion. "I mean, the Faction aren't the type to just… _talk_ about what they're planning to do to anyone…"

"As the Doctor is no doubt aware, the Daleks have gone to great lengths to conceal their history from others," Davros said, turning to look at the young woman. "However, since my return, my own role in their creation has been impossible to conceal…"

"So… anyone looking for the _exact_ details about when they were created… would have to go to you?" Amy asked uncertainly.

"Precisely," Davros said, looking at the young woman with a slight smile. "And you are?"

"Amy," Amy replied, suddenly cursing her earlier curiosity; after what the Doctor had said about this man earlier, the last thing she wanted was to draw too much attention to herself.

" _That_ is not important," the Doctor said, glaring at the Daleks' creator. "You're saying that the _Faction_ came to _talk_ to you?"

"I had been trapped in this ship since my last escape from Skaro, with only a few loyal Daleks in my service, until the Faction came to me in their… shrines," Davros said, his scathing tone making his opinion of the Faction's methods clear. "Weakened by the recent war with the Dalek Prime's faction on Skaro, my Daleks were eventually overwhelmed by the power of the Faction, until only I was left alive on this ship. Torture was not practical in my current state for… obvious reasons… but they were able to find other means of ensuring my cooperation… mind probes, truth serums…"

"And _you_ didn't have a plan to resist that kind of thing?" the Doctor asked sceptically. "You spent all your life on a war footing-"

"The Thals' interrogation techniques were inferior to my own, and I was always certain that my value would be greater alive than dead," Davros said grimly.

"Ah," the Doctor said, looking at Davros in thoughtful understanding. "In other words, you knew what they could do to you without risking killing you, and you knew they'd never go that far?"

"Exactly," Davros confirmed. "All that the Thals could do to me was deprive me of life-support for a time; what the Faction are capable of is far worse…"

"Besides, this is the Faction we're talking about," Amy added. "For all we know, they could have tortured you to death a few times and then gone back to undo it and try something non-fatal."

She shrugged awkwardly as Davros looked at her with what could have been considered fear if she'd seen it on anyone else. "Hey, the Faction didn't get their reputation by doing things in order, and it sounds like they _really_ wanted what you'd have to tell them."

" _Anyway_ ," the Doctor said, clapping his hands together and drawing Davros's attention back to him, "the point is, you gave them the dates they were after?"

"The date when we first met," Davros said, nodding grimly at the Doctor. "Since your own people identified that time as a suitable date to impact my work, it seemed logical that it would be useful for… other endeavours."

"And they left you alive afterwards?" Amy asked in surprise

"They stated that it would be more… amusing," Davros said bitterly. "They knew that I could take steps to protect myself from what they were about to do…"

"But also knew that you wouldn't be in a position to do anything about it on your own," the Doctor said, looking critically at Davros. "And you decided to look for my help with _no_ intention of wanting me dead?"

"The Faction are arrogant, Doctor, but we are both aware that they have no serious interest in killing _you_ at that time," Davros said, chuckling slightly as he studied the Time Lord. "You are the only person capable of thwarting their efforts, particularly if the stories I have heard are true-"

" _No_ ," the Doctor said coldly, walked up to Davros and placing a hand over a switch on Davros's chair, grabbing Davros's arm before the twisted scientist could do anything.

"Even _imply_ anything about that again," the Doctor said, staring coldly at Davros, "and I will fulfil the promise I made in our first meeting; I will _never_ be like him."

"Of course," Davros said, sounding almost apologetic as the Doctor released his grip on the Kaled scientist's arm. "Forgive me; the Faction have been most… troublesome."

"I'll bet," the Doctor said grimly. "The Daleks weren't designed for guerrilla-esque tactics; you thought that they'd either be waging a large-scale war or dealing with the few pitiful survivors who wouldn't have the will to fight back…"

"We can engage in these pointless debates as much as we wish, but we cannot wait forever," Davros said grimly. "The chronal shield I have been using to protect myself will not last forever, and there is no way of knowing when it will cut out…"

"Which is another reason you've had to lure Ace here to bring me in," the Doctor noted. "You couldn't leave the shield in case you were affected by any of the changes the Faction were trying to carry out…"

Nodding thoughtfully as he studied the Kaled scientist, the Doctor finally looked firmly at his old enemy. "What exactly are the Faction trying to do to the Daleks?"

"They intend to do what you were sent to do on our first meeting, and affect the early development of my creations," Davros explained. "They will program them for instinct and intuition from the beginning, omitting the mistakes I made by focusing on the negative emotions only, giving the Daleks the imagination they need to be truly dangerous…"

"As well as ensuring their loyalty to the Faction?" the Doctor asked, his scathing tone now returned. "Admit it; how much of this request for my help is just because you don't want the Faction to do all that where you couldn't?"

"That… plays its part," Davros conceded, having the decency to sound slightly chagrined before he looked back at the Doctor with a slight chuckle. "But you cannot deny the dangers of the situation I describe."

"That's… why I agreed to send that signal, Professor," Ace explained, stepping forward to look at her friend. "I was all set to try and fight him off to get that core back, but then he told me everything, and… well, you always said the Daleks' lack of imagination was their main drawback…"

"True," the Doctor said, nodding briefly before he looked at the Kaled scientist. "It's almost funny, really; after you always said I lacked the courage to act, now you're _asking_ me to act on your behalf…"

"Hang on," Amy said, indicating the ship around them. "I know this thing doesn't look like much, and I get that you need the… chronal shield thing to protect you, but if you could get to Paris to find Ace-?"

"Why can't he just go to Skaro himself and avoid needing to be protected by the shield?" Ace finished for Amy. "Three reasons, really; he's obviously not built for stealth, his ship's too damaged to make it that far, and it wouldn't let him go there anyway."

"Only two of those-" Davros began indignantly.

"You're not exactly going to sneak around anywhere like _that_ ," Ace said, allowing herself a chuckle as she indicated his lower half. "In case you're forgetting, you'd just be the intruder back then; you wouldn't have access to all the stuff you relied on back in the day without tipping yourself and the Faction off."

"Hold on; I _think_ I've got this…" Amy interjected, looking at Davros with uncertain understanding. "You can't go back to the time the Faction have gone to… because… you're already there and the past you would notice?"

"Precisely," Davros said, an edge of contempt in his voice as he looked at the Time Lord. "But you, Doctor… we know that there have been past occasions when _you_ have met yourself…"

"And I didn't actually travel to Skaro in the TARDIS on that occasion, so the automatic security protocols won't be as much of an issue anyway…" the Doctor noted, nodding thoughtfully as he stared at Davros, standing in silence for a moment before he nodded.

"All right," he said at last. "Just so long as we're both clear that I'm _only_ going there to stop the Faction."

"I would not expect you to do anything else," Davros said politely.

"Save it," the Doctor said, before he looked over at Ace. "Ace, you're going to have to stay here."

"Sure," the older woman said, looking at Davros with a slight scowl.

"You do not trust me?" Davros asked.

"Why should I?" the Doctor retorted, before he turned back to Amy. "Come along, Pond; next stop, ancient Skaro."

"Master?" another voice said, K9 emerging from the ship as the Doctor opened the door.

"Ah, perfect," the Doctor said, smiling at the robot dog. "Ace, you remember K9?"

"Who could forget?" Ace said, smiling slightly at the robot dog. "You made it off Gallifrey, then?"

"Affirmative," K9 said, before his body turned slightly as he moved to face Davros. "Query; why is Davros here?"

"He asked for our help," the Doctor said, looking distastefully at the other figure before he looked back at K9. "Which reminds me, you should probably stay here to help Ace keep an eye on him; best will in the world, you're not really built for Skaro."

"Affirmative," K9 said again, before he moved forwards to stand alongside Ace, his nose-laser aimed at Davros. "Be advised that attempts to assault this unit or Miss Ace will be met with deadly force."

"All this suspicion towards me when I approached _you_ for help?" Davros asked, looking at him with a smile.

"I trust you about as far as I could throw you, Davros; I think we both know that you exhausted any chance of goodwill from me a long time ago," the Doctor said grimly. With that solemn statement made, he returned to the TARDIS, Amy close behind him, before he closed the doors and set the ship in motion.

"We're actually doing this?" Amy asked, looking at her friend inquiringly as he began to adjust the coordinates. "I mean, we're really trying to go somewhere where you've already been-?"

"Believe me, this would be dangerous even if the Faction weren't a factor," the Doctor explained as he continued to move around the console. "Unfortunately, this is one situation where the dangers of not going outweigh the risk of going; if the Faction gain control of the Daleks, they have access to the most dangerous and evil race I've ever encountered, with all their weaknesses taken out and under the control of a madman who knows at least everything I know about them."

"Right," Amy said, nodding grimly. "So… bad?"

"Bad," the Doctor confirmed as he finished setting the coordinates before he looked directly at her. "We're on our way now, so here are the rules-"

"Rules?" Amy interjected. "You've never given me rules before-"

"We've never been heading into a Faction plot that directly interferes with my past before," the Doctor clarified. "As I said, here are the rules; stay close to me at all times, go nowhere unless I confirm it's safe to do so, talk to nobody unless you absolutely have to, and above all else, do _nothing_ to attract attention to yourself."

"Understood," Amy said, nodding in confirmation.

Considering the expression on the Doctor's face, and the stories she'd heard about the Daleks so far, she could certainly understand his anxiety…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there you have it; the Eleventh Doctor and Amy are going back to the events of 'Genesis of the Daleks' to stop the Faction changing history and taking control of the Daleks. Just to warn everyone in advance, the plan is that the upcoming storyline will be the Dr Who equivalent of the _Deep Space Nine_ / _Original Series_ 'crossover' "Trials and Tribble-Ations", with the 'modern' characters glimpsing the originals but not interacting with them directly as they're 'edited' into existing footage, but I might alter that if the plot seems appropriate; we'll see how things go.


	18. Back in Skaro

As the TARDIS rematerialized, the Doctor having changed into a long green coat as opposed to his usual tweed jacket, Amy had to admit that the current destination was almost disappointing.

She knew from the Doctor's story that Skaro as a planet had been subjected to a thousand years of warfare, but the actual sight of it…

She had to wonder what could drive two sides to hate each other so much that they'd turn their entire planet into this.

"Not a pretty sight, is it?" the Doctor mused as he walked out to stand beside her, staring grimly at their surroundings. "But that's what happens when you spend over a thousand years fighting a war."

"So… it was really a thousand years?" Amy repeated, looking at the Doctor incredulously. "They were at war _that_ long?"

"Give or take, anyway; for obvious reasons, I never had the chance to ask anyone for a specific figure, or work out what started it all off," the Doctor said, shaking his head as he studied the scene laid out before him. "By the time it was over, I don't think either side knew how it had begun, or even acknowledged that they were the same species with different names for their actions; all they cared about was victory. They'd used so many nuclear, chemical and biological weapons over the centuries that they'd caused serious changes to their genetic structure, and while the Thals came through it reasonably intact, the Kaleds' mutation allowed Davros to introduce the concept of the Daleks because every test they carried out made it clear that their mutation was irreversible."

"Did you ever check-?"

"First thing I did when I had the chance," the Doctor confirmed grimly. "Davros might have had an ego the size of a planet, but he was willing to acknowledge that he might not _know_ everything even if he had specific ideas about what the future should hold. His work on the end result of the Kaled mutation was accurate enough; he just preferred to mould its emotional state the way he thought it should be rather than let it unfold on its own."

"Oh," Amy said, lost for anything better to say before she remembered something else she'd been wondering about. "So… what was the past you doing here?"

"I was sent here by the Time Lords to alter or prevent the creation of the Daleks."

Amy blinked.

"Excuse me?" she said incredulously. "I thought the Time Lords were all about _preserving_ history-"

"The Time Lord who spoke to me felt that the risk of the Daleks becoming too powerful in the future was too dangerous and wanted me to find some way to change that," the Doctor explained, his expression grim. "Once I arrived on Skaro and made contact with the Daleks' progenitors, the Kaleds, I set out to try and convince the leading Council to stop Davros's experiments… I tried to make sure that the dome where the experiments were being carried out would be destroyed… I even tried to convince Davros that he should change the Daleks himself…"

"None of it worked?" Amy asked, reaching over to give the Doctor's shoulder a sympathetic squeeze.

"Nothing," the Doctor confirmed grimly. "In the end, the only thing left for me to do was set up a series of explosives that would have destroyed the Daleks in their incubation room before they could even be placed inside their familiar casings… blow them all up while they were helpless… and I couldn't even do that."

For a moment, the two of them stood in silence in the wasteland, the Doctor staring out at the scene before him while Amy could only look at him in helpless silence, until the Doctor finally shrugged and smiled at her. "Well, we'd better get going; if I timed our arrival correctly, at the moment I'm walking through a minefield with Sarah and Harry, so if we can get to the Kaled dome in time, we should be able to sneak in while security's occupied with me."

"You remember where you were here?" Amy asked in surprise. "How long's it been?"

"Not long enough for me to stop wondering if there was anything I could have done differently."

There was nothing that Amy could say so that expect start hurrying after the Doctor, wishing that she'd had time to change out of her jeans into something more comfortable; her skirt would have been a worse choice, but these still weren't the most practical attire for this kind of hike.

After an hour or so of walking, the Doctor held out a hand to halt Am as they stared at a small trench at the bottom of the hill they were currently on; the angle wasn't great, but hidden behind these rocks they had a decent view of the location below them without giving anyone a reason to look their way.

As she crouched beside the Doctor, Amy accepted his offer of a pair of binoculars as she studied the indicated trench, eyes widening as she saw a familiar woman in a yellow anorak walking into the trench.

"Sarah Jane?" she said, looking at the Doctor in surprise. " _She_ was with you on this trip?"

"Her and Harry Sullivan," the Doctor confirmed with a slight smile, before he indicated the group before them. "Take another look."

Frowning slightly, Amy turned her attention back to the other two men in the trench (There were a few people slumped against the trench walls in soldiers' uniforms, but she felt safe enough ignoring them). One man had thick curly brown hair and was wearing a long brown duffle-coat over a blue jacket and trousers, but the other man had even wilder hair and was wearing a massive scarf and a floppy hat, along with a long dark jacket.

The first man might be wearing clothes that put her more in mind of the Doctor, but Amy was fairly sure that no normal human would go around dressed like the other man…

"You're the one in the scarf?" she asked with a slight smile.

"Bingo," the Doctor confirmed, before his eyes narrowed. "Wait a moment…"

Amy was about to ask what they were waiting for when the trench they were watching was suddenly filled with yellow gas. As the woman who was apparently a younger Sarah pulled on a gas mask from one of the men in the trench, a series of gunshots erupted from new arrivals at either side of the trench, culminating in the younger Doctor and the man who was apparently Harry Sullivan being dragged into a door at one end of the trench by one of the groups as the other retreated.

" _Move_!" the Doctor yelled, passing Amy a small mask before he began to run down towards the trench. Confused as to what had just happened, but trusting the Doctor's judgement, Amy put the small mask on and hurried down after him. Reaching the trench as the Doctor used the sonic screwdriver on the door, Amy hurried up to her friend as he opened the door and waved her inside, entering and closing the door behind them.

"Getting in now was our best chance based on what I can remember," the Doctor explained as Amy looked at him curiously. "Right now, security in the bunker would still be on alert from the original intruder alert that my past self set off, but the guards won't have had time to confirm that they've captured anyone yet; without any other Thal survivors in the area, anyone who notices that the door opened after the team returned to the bunker will assume that someone was late back in, and nobody's going to want to get a soldier in trouble for being late to use a door when they're this low on numbers."

"Makes sense," Amy nodded thoughtfully before looking curiously at him once again. "What about the Faction?"

"Well, the Faction agent we're after probably followed the same plan to get inside. Considering that this whole planet's on a war footing, he can't afford to replace someone here in case he slips up in copying their routine and gets shot as an enemy agent or something before he can provide a suitable cover story, so his best bet is to stay hidden and do what he came here to do while everyone's busy with the younger me."

"Uh… You're sure the guy we're after would come here _now_?" Amy asked. "I mean, I get your argument, but if the Faction know _you're_ here-"

"Until I came to Skaro, Davros's full focus was the Dalek project; he'd definitely notice if someone tried to tamper with it earlier," the Doctor explained. "While I'm here, Davros will be dealing with… other matters, so his full focus won't be on the Daleks; it wouldn't be too hard for someone to plant a few key changes to the production line if they knew what they were doing."

"Which these guys will, right?" Amy noted, even as she nodded in acknowledgement of the Doctor's assessment. "So, where to now?"

"To the Dalek hatchery," the Doctor said grimly. "Davros won't activate any further Daleks until I persuade the leading Kaled council to investigate his plans; if the Faction want to tamper with the production line, they'd need to go straight to the source."

Amy didn't need her long experience with her friend to see how tense he was about this whole situation; the tension in his shoulders alone made it clear that he was finding this whole mess to be a very difficult forced assignment.

As he'd said to Davros back on the ship, choosing not to kill his deadliest enemies wasn't the same as actively working to save them, even if the new threat would have been potentially greater…


	19. Outside the Hatchery

A couple of hours later, as she and the Doctor waited in the empty room they'd discovered near the Dalek hatchery, Amy couldn't understand what this whole war on Skaro had been all about.

Wars on Earth had sometimes struck her as pointless when she'd read about them in history- it always seemed to be about the original aggressor wanting more land for some reason or another, which could have been settled if people just sat down and talked about it- but she couldn't imagine what had inspired the Kaleds and the Thals to keep fighting for so long after their entire _planet_ had been reduced to the state she'd seen out there.

Looking at things from a certain point of view, she could understand why the Kaleds might need to create the Daleks if what she'd seen in the hatchery was an accurate representation of what they were 'destined' to become, but even if she gave Davros the benefit of the doubt and assumed that he couldn't design something more humanoid, that didn't explain what could drive people to fight such a devastating war…

"You don't know whether to curse them or pity them, do you?" the Doctor said, looking thoughtfully at her after a few moments of silence.

"Who?" Amy asked, looking back at the Doctor.

"The Daleks," the Doctor noted. "It's easy to see them as remorseless machines most of the time, so committed to conquest and their own belief in their superiority that they think everything's justifiable because they're the ones doing it… and then you see this, and you realise that every single Dalek you ever fought started out as a pitiful mess that mutilated itself because it genuinely thought that was the only way it could survive…"

He sat in silence for a moment, staring grimly at the door ahead of them, clearly lost in thought.

"It's why you couldn't kill them."

"Mmm?" the Doctor said, unusually solemn as he looked back at Amy.

"It's why you didn't kill them when you were here before," Amy clarified, indicating the door in front of them. "You just… well, they were pathetic and helpless, right?"

"As good as, anyway," the Doctor confirmed. With his stiff back making it clear that he wasn't willing to discuss that issue any further, Amy joined him in a solemn silence as they resumed their vigil of the door before them, each uncertain what they could say or do aside from waiting for their enemy.

"How long are we going to have to stay here, anyway?"

"As long as it takes, depending on when the Faction's agent wants to take action; all I can be sure of is that now is his best chance to make any changes to the Daleks' development," the Doctor explained.

"Why?"

"When I got here, Davros had already completed the Dalek prototype, but he didn't feel like he needed to really _do_ anything with them any time soon," the Time Lord continued. "You have to keep in mind, as far as he knew, the war was going to continue for a while and everyone was going to keep praising his genius and generally letting him carry on with his work while he continued to improve the Daleks for when the mutations they were created to compensate for became the norm. Since he had no reason to need the Daleks for anything just yet, the hatchery containing the Dalek mutants is relatively ignored at this point, which means that this is the best opportunity for anyone wanting to change things to do something that might not attract Davros's attention."

"Hold on; he was preparing for his people to be stuck in… _that_ … and _nobody_ objected to it?" Amy said incredulously, remembering everything she'd seen of the Dalek casings.

"Well, only a few people knew _what_ he was preparing for as the end result- everyone else just thought he was working out what they were going to mutate into in the end- but the thing you have to keep in mind is that, as far as Davros was concerned, the rest of the world needed to accept what he was doing and deal with it," the Doctor explained. "When I first came here, one of the other scientists told me when I claimed to be from another planet that Davros had determined that no other planet they knew of could sustain life, so either I was lying or Davros was wrong…"

"And as far as they were concerned, Davros was never wrong, right?" Amy finished.

The Doctor nodded in confirmation, but was prevented from saying any more when they heard footsteps approaching from another corridor. Waving anxiously at Amy, the Doctor pressed himself against the corner of the corridor they were waiting in to watch the hatchery door as a man came around the corner, wearing the dark uniform that seemed to be the common attire inside this bunker. The man was just approaching the door of the Dalek hatchery when the Doctor made a decision and stepped forward, grinning as the other man turned to look at him in shock.

"Going somewhere, Cousin?" the Doctor asked, smirking in satisfaction as the other man turned to look at him, demonstrating a thin face that made him look almost skeletal in appearance.

"You…" he said, eyes narrowing as he glared at the Doctor.

"Me," the Doctor replied with a grim nod; the man's reaction and recognition at least confirmed that he was facing the Faction agent he'd been looking for, but it left them with the obvious challenge of dealing with him.

"You wouldn't dare-" the thin man began.

"Interfere with my own past?" the Doctor finished, glaring at the other man. "That's what your Grandfather will never be able to understand; just because I prefer _not_ to risk history doesn't mean I won't step in when I have to do so…"

"What do you even _care_ what I do here?" the other man spat incredulously at the Doctor. "You're here trying to _stop_ these things-"

"And _you_ are here to recruit them for your own purposes; don't even try and delude yourself into thinking that we're alike," the Doctor countered coldly. "Now then, we both know that Davros will be down here in a few moments, so you need to decide what's more important; trying to complete your mission, or-?"

Roaring in outrage, the other man suddenly charged at the Doctor, his arms shimmering and twisting until his hands seemed to have experienced several months' worth of decay in a matter of seconds while filing the bones to long points. As their attacker lashed out with a swing of his suddenly-taloned hands, the Doctor narrowly managed to dodge the blow before lashing out with a quick punch of his own, only for the air around them to shimmer once again as the man suddenly grabbed the Doctor by the throat.

"Do you really think the Grandfather would have sent me all this way with _no_ precautions?" the other man asked, glaring at the Doctor with an arrogant smirk. "I have been imbued with enough temporal energy to evade anything-"

Amy suddenly leapt forward and struck the Cousin in the back of the head with a powerful kick, forcing him to release his grip on the Doctor as he staggered away while the young woman joined the Doctor in glaring at the Faction agent.

"We're making too much noise now; do you really want to draw Davros here?" the Doctor asked, looking mockingly at the Cousin as he regained his focus to glare at them. "You might be able to tweak around your own body's timeline, but even the Faction can't push things too far in a contained nexus area like this."

"You doubt our power?" the Cousin glared at the Doctor.

"I doubt your ability," the Doctor corrected. "We both have to know that we've made enough noise to attract the guards, and my younger self will be here later on, so what's more important to you; _maybe_ planting the necessary instructions to alter the Daleks before you're caught, or surviving to do it later without affecting the Grandfather's history?"

"The Grandfather-!" the Cousin began.

"Is _not_ powerful enough to cope with you killing his past self like this," the Doctor countered firmly. "Move on now, and we can forget about this whole mess… but keep up this perverted plan, and I _will_ stop you."

The Cousin glared at the Doctor

"You're just letting him _go_?" Amy said, looking at the Doctor in shock. "But he-"

"With that time-bending trick of his, we just aren't equipped to stop him carrying out his mission without compromising the timeline right now, considering that it would take a lot of effort to get him anywhere if we had to knock him out," the Doctor said grimly. "I should have anticipated it earlier; the Grandfather wouldn't just send out his standard temporal anarchist for a mission like this…"

He shook his head in frustration, before he turned and indicated the nearest corridor in the opposite direction from the Cousin's point of departure. "We have to get moving; regardless of why I brought it up, the guards _are_ coming, and I'd rather not be here when they do."

"Good point," Amy said, hurrying after the Time Lord for a few turns as they ran deeper into the base. They only slowed to a walking pace once the Doctor was satisfied that they were a decent distance from the hatchery, walking in silence for a few moments before Amy broke the silence.

"So…" she said, looking uncertainly at the Doctor. "That was… simple?"

"That's the Faction for you," the Doctor shrugged. "When they can't be completely certain if they'll win, like all bullies, they tend to back off, and right now, he can't be sure if he'll do his job in time to escape being caught after the racket we just made."

"And the fact that he wasn't expecting you here probably helped, right?"

"Right," the Doctor said grimly. "Give him a little time to adapt to me being here, and he'll try again with a better plan; what's important right now is that we've got a bit more time to stop him, and he's aware that he needs to be more cautious if he wants to affect the Daleks without affecting the contained nexus…"

"Right…" Amy said, nodding in thoughtful understanding before she looked at him with new curiosity. "What was all that about the contained nexus stuff?"

"I told you about fixed points in time, right?" the Doctor asked, waiting for Amy to nod in confirmation before he continued. "A contained nexus is something similar to a fixed point, but also different; where fixed points _cannot_ be altered, a contained nexus refers to a location in time and space where the events that take place in that area can have a significant effect on the wider universe, but those events _can_ be altered so long as people are careful about it."

"Like that planet… the one with the flying fish?" Amy asked.

"Precisely," the Doctor nodded in approval of Amy's memory. "Of course, in that case, the contained nexus was caused by the unique electrical properties of the planet's atmosphere, whereas here it was caused by the various nuclear weapons used on Skaro over the years, but the net result is the same; so long as you have a well-developed time machine and know what you're trying to do rather than just charging in and acting out, changing history here is a lot easier than changing it elsewhere so long as you're careful to make the right changes at the right time."

"Which… doesn't include killing you, right?" Amy asked.

"It doesn't," the Doctor smiled. "For all that the Grandfather might talk about the irrelevance of the past and express a _willingness_ to kill his past selves, he can't actually _do_ it himself. Manipulating a few human lives is one thing, but without the technology of the Time Lords, if he tried to alter our shared past, he'd risk causing a serious temporal rift, and it's only riskier now that I'm here."

"Which doesn't mean that this guy might not do it by accident, right?" Amy asked.

"Precisely," the Doctor acknowledged grimly. "We drove him back for now, but he'll try again later; Davros is going to be bringing his prototype back here soon while my past self is interrogated, so our 'friend' there will be unable to get into the hatchery while Davros is working on the production line…"

He glanced at his wrist, looked thoughtfully upwards for a few seconds, and then nodded. "Right then; we need to head to the lower levels for the next couple of hours; we've tipped our hand, but since the other one need to think about this as well, we're technically both disadvantaged for the moment."

"What happens after a couple of hours?" Amy asked.

"If I'm remembering everything correctly, around that time, Davros will make a secret trip to the Thal dome to sell them the secret of penetrating the _Kaled_ dome in exchange for being allowed to continue his scientific research once the conflict's over," the Doctor explained, as he and Amy walked briskly along the corridor. "He won't be activating the Daleks _en masse_ for a while, but if I'm remembering events correctly, he's only recently finished demonstrating the prototype Dalek to the Kaled people. Once my past self is taken down to the hatchery, he'll be taken to a meeting with the Kaled leading council, which will result in the Kaleds ordering Davros to suspend his work while they examine his experiments."

"And then he sells the Kaleds' secrets to the Thals so that he can eliminate the council and take charge himself, right?" Amy asked, smiling as the Doctor nodded at her in approval before her face fell. "And… we can't stop _that_ from happening, right?"

"No, but we _can_ make sure that the Thals are ready to evacuate," the Doctor explained, smiling at his companion. "You're going to head off to the Thal dome and warn the general population that they need to evacuate; be discreet about it, but the sooner you can pass on the message, the more can be saved."

"Really?" Amy said in surprise.

"Well, I know the Thals have to survive this war, but I never bothered to get an exact headcount of who made it out before I left; if we can change that a bit, why not try?" the Doctor said, smiling at Amy to conceal his own apprehension.

What he was planning regarding the Thals was a delicate bit of work, but he had to ensure that enough of them survived to help his first incarnation defeat the Daleks in his fateful first encounter with them all those years ago, as well as allowing them to evacuate the planet later…


	20. The Insanity of Davros

The problem with dealing with a crisis in your own past, the Doctor mused as he sat and thought in a disused part of the building, staring at a screen he'd set up to monitor the feed from the security cameras near the hatchery, was that you spent most of your time trying to remember what you'd done the first time around so that you could be sure you wouldn't stop yourself from succeeding in the original goal. The fact that his coming here had changed history in the first place just made it all the important that he take care; the Time Lords had been able to mitigate any particularly serious 'damage' to the timeline during his first visit, but with them… gone… he couldn't afford to be as casual about his presence here.

The most obvious handicap to that issue was that he couldn't be sure what he should do about this whole mess beyond keeping his head down and hoping for the best. On the face of it, keeping the Cousin away from the Dalek hatchery seemed like a simple task, particularly when he'd alerted the Cousin to his presence and deflected the first attempt easily enough. However, while it was the simplest solution, he could hardly hang around near the hatchery all the time; it might guarantee that his opponent couldn't access it, but if he was caught by one of the Kaled forces than everything could do wrong. Even if Gharman's planned revolution against Davros wouldn't work out, the Doctor couldn't afford to just grab a gun from the armoury and try and deal with the Cousin that way; apart from it not being his preferred method of doing things, how could he be sure if the absence of that particular gun would cause problems for Gharman later on?

That uncertainty was one of the main reasons that he'd sent Amy off to the Thal city; it might be just as potentially dangerous as the situation over here, but since the specifics of events in the Thal city weren't known at the moment, being over there would give Amy comparatively greater freedom to take action.

Working out how to get Amy to the Thal city had actually been the easiest part of their current plan; all he'd needed to do was access Davros's records and find his notes on the various underground tunnels and secret paths that the Kaled scientist had discovered over the years. Davros might be a genius in any time frame, but after all the times that the Doctor had fought him and/or worked with him in the past/future, he had gained some insight into what Davros might use as passwords and traps, while the Davros of this time period currently believed that nobody would ever be smart enough to crack his codes or dare to do so anyway; put the two together, and it hadn't been that hard to find what he was looking for. After giving Amy a quickly-printed map and the psychic paper for added identification, he'd sent her on her way while he settled into position to wait for the Cousin's potential next move; it was unlikely he'd try anything right now, but unlikely wasn't the same as impossible.

He regretted being on his own in the base right now, of course, but it wasn't that bad. Not only did he now know what his enemy looked like, but when he needed additional reassurance, he just had to close his eyes and subtly reach out to make contact with the subconscious of his younger self, and feel the comfort of another Time Lord mind after so long on his own…

It was a delicate balance to strike, of course- make enough contact to feel his other self without letting his fourth incarnation become aware of him- but he'd been alone for so long he felt that he'd earned the right to a little secret comfort.

He just hated to think of everything he had to let happen in order for history to unfold as it should. Once Davros returned from the Thal dome in the not-too-distant future, he would activate his first wave of Daleks to send them to the Thal dome while the Thals destroyed the Kaled government bunker, and the Doctor just had to make sure that the Cousin didn't have the chance to access those Daleks before they were activated.

It might not make much difference one way or the other- even if those Daleks were altered, the Doctor would have time to 'reset' the production line before he had to leave- but he'd prefer not to take any chances. The obvious solution of simply alerting the Kaleds to the Cousin's existence wasn't practical for several reasons, ranging from the risks to history if he drew attention to his presence to the risks of the Kaleds learning too much from the Cousin if they caught him; the fact that everyone here but Davros and his past self was destined to die soon only gave him so much leeway…

Checking his self-adjusting watch, he tried not to think about the fact that he was only a few moments away from the destruction of the Kaled dome; he had to have faith that Amy was working on getting the Thals out of danger at the moment, and then he'd deal with the Cousin.

The sight of Davros heading for the hatchery to activate the production line provoked a rare smile from the Doctor; it was one of the few occasions where the thought of Daleks being active in any time period would be a good thing for him. Once those Daleks were out and about, there was nothing that the Cousin could do to them without attracting unwanted attention to himself, which meant that the Doctor had just a bit more time to spare before he next had to worry about anyone doing anything to the production line…

In other words, he now had some free time available until anyone could do anything that he had to stop, so he was going to head back out of the base for the moment and move the TARDIS to a more accessible location. Landing on the battlefield might have been a necessary first port of call, but once Sarah, Harry and his past self had escaped the Thal and Kaled domes, the underground tunnels would be a far safer hiding place for the ship, as well as being more accessible to them on short notice.

Considering that his fourth self would be coming back here soon to face his crucial choice, the Doctor would rather not have to be any closer to his younger self at that moment than he absolutely had to…

* * *

Getting out of the base was actually comparatively simpler than getting in had been; even with the entire planet on a war footing, most people were more concerned about the risks of someone breaking in rather than out, particularly with the state that most of the planet was in. After taking a couple of the Kaleds' anti-radiation pulls for safety- he'd given a few to Amy earlier, but even with his metabolism and regeneration-induced resistance, it was better safe than sorry- he'd set out for the location where the TARDIS had materialised, smiling in satisfaction when the familiar blue box appeared in front of him.  
  
"Hello, old girl," he said, patting the exterior with a warm grin before he reached for his key, only to halt as he suddenly sensed a strange build-up of temporal pressure in his vicinity.  
  
For him to be aware of something like that without any equipment, the source/destination of whatever was happening must be _very_ close…  
  
Stepping back from the ship, his eyes urgently scanned his surroundings until a sudden glow appeared just beside the TARDIS, which swiftly faded away to reveal Ace's time-hopper, Davros's chair connected to the side like a traditional side-car and Ace sitting astride it with a frustrated expression on her face and a large metal helmet-like device over her head.  
  
"Doctor," Davros said, looking at the Time Lord in his usual cool manner as he pressed a button that disconnected his chair from the hopper. "How… unfortunate… that you are here now."  
  
"I could say the same thing," the Doctor countered, glaring back at Davros; he was barely even surprised by this turn of events. "I know what they say about assuming anything, but this seems a bit desperate even for you; I thought you agreed with me that it was too risky for you to come here?"  
  
"It was too risky for me to attempt to travel here in _my_ time machine, Doctor," Davros clarified, chuckling as he looked at the Time Lord. "But once you had come here, and with access to Miss McShane's 'time hopper', it was actually very simple to follow your route from the ship to this location…"  
  
"I see," the Doctor said, before indicating the helmet-like device on Ace's head, briefly registering her frustrated mumbles before focusing on the more immediate questions facing him. "And that thing is?"  
  
"A basic version of the Robomen helmets you may have witnessed in past encounters with us; unlike them, this one simply takes physical control of the subject without compromising their minds in the long term," Davros explained with a slight smile. "There were times when reliable physical labour was required, but there was also the possibility of certain subjects having valuable intelligence that they may be… inclined to share later…"  
  
"So these things give you complete physical control of the subject while leaving their minds intact in case they 'want' to talk to you later?" the Doctor finished, shaking his head as he looked grimly at Davros. "Once again, you keep coming up with new ways to make me sick, don't you?"  
  
"It is all a matter of practicality," Davros said in his usual cool manner. "I only seek what should have always been mine…"  
  
"The chance to shape and control the development of the Daleks, correct?" the Doctor said, shaking his head in frustration. "You know, I almost preferred you when you were working on the Juggernaut program; the results were still sick, but at least you tried something new rather than continuing to get stuck in the old loop."  
  
"You would do well not to mock me, Doctor," Davros said, indicating a certain switch on his chair. "Simply because these helmets were designed to preserve the individual consciousness of the wear does not mean that I cannot shut it down if I wanted to…"  
  
"Allow me!" another voice suddenly called out. Davros and the Doctor barely had time to turn and look in the direction of the voice before Amy Pond had dived forward, grabbing Davros's arm and forcing it behind his back before he could react.  
  
" _Pond_!" the Doctor grinned warmly at his companion.  
  
"That's me," Amy grinned back at the Doctor. "I set up a few escape routes and was able to warn a few people, then I thought I'd just slip back here and grab a quick bite to eat before I got back to you; guess I got lucky."  
  
"Quite," the Doctor grinned at her, before he focused his attention on Davros with a cold glare. "Now then, Davros, release Ace from that helmet and I won't have to make things… difficult."  
  
"You wouldn't," Davros replied.  
  
"After everything you've done and everything you know I've been through, do you want to believe that you can predict what I'm willing to do to you?" the Doctor countered, glaring at Davros. "Particularly when you threaten my _family_?"  
  
After staring coldly at the Time Lord for a moment, Davros practically growled in frustration before he reached down to tap another button on his chair, causing the helmet on Ace's head to break in half and fall to the ground. As Ace slumped to the floor with it, the Doctor hurried over to check her pulse with one hand while placing the other on her head.  
  
"Is she-?" Amy began.  
  
"Dazed, but she'll recover," the Doctor responded, before focusing his attention back to Davros. "No thanks to you…"  
  
"How did you even get that thing _on_ her?" Amy asked, looking uncertainly at the Kaled scientist. "I mean, you're… well, you're in what can best be described as a wheelchair-"  
  
"With a weapon in that hand, right?" the Doctor asked, indicating Davros's cybernetic hand with his sonic screwdriver, followed by a brief whir as the screwdriver targeted the hand and triggered a brief spurt of sparks. "The weapon I just disabled?"  
  
"You always were quick to adapt, Doctor," Davros noted solemnly, even as he 'stared' in frustration at the damaged hand.  
  
"Talking of being quick to adapt, when you said you were aware of the dangers of coming here, I take it that you just meant that you knew your tech wouldn't _let_ you come here?" Amy interjected, glaring at Davros in frustration. "What were you going to do here; kill yourself and take your place?"  
  
The silence that greeted them was enough of an answer for that.  
  
"Are you a _complete_ idiot?" Amy practically spat at the creature, stepping away from his chair in disgust. "You were going to kill _yourself_?"  
  
"Merely immobilise myself until I had the time to explain the situation," Davros explained. "Contrary to what you think of me, I am not insane-"  
  
"Depends on your definition of 'insane', really," the Doctor interjected, glaring at Davros in cold contempt. "And there was me hoping that you'd actually gained some _sense_ since we were last here… You're still totally reliant on that paradox shield to stop yourself being erased from history if you put so much as one finger in the wrong place while you're here, and you seriously _still_ think that you can affect the development of the Daleks? You've exhausted your only role of the dice, Davros; going back like this is _dangerous_ -!"  
  
"I am quite capable of comprehending the risks-"  
  
"Like you were capable of controlling the Hand of Omega?" the Doctor countered, giving Davros a mocking grin as the Kaled scientist seemed to scowl at the reminder of that particular failure; he still didn't entirely approve of what his past self had done during that mess, but he'd made the only choice he could at that point and he'd do it again if he had to. "Your ambition was always greater than your common sense, Davros, but Faction Paradox makes this even _more_ dangerous…"  
  
"I can deal with the Faction, Doctor-!" Davros began.  
  
"No you _can't_!" the Doctor interjected, walking up to slam his hands down on either side of Davros's chair as he towered over the scientist. "You got this chance _because_ of them; do you really think they'll just let you take control of the Daleks after they went to these kind of lengths to get here? The universe is hanging by _threads_ since the destruction of Gallifrey, and you think you have the right to tamper with them just because you don't like what happened the first time? You do _not_ have the right to change-!"  
  
" _I have every right, Doctor_!" Davros began, lashing out with his arm at the Doctor's face, only for his arm to be grabbed before it could make contact.  
  
"You. Don't. Touch. The Doctor," Ace practically spat at the Kaled scientist. "He's a better man than you'll _ever_ be."  
  
"I am only seeking what is rightfully mine-" Davros began.  
  
"You had the chance to save your people and you destroyed it because you thought you knew best," the Doctor said firmly. "You don't get to re-do something like that, Davros… and if you can't accept that on your own, I'll just have to _make_ you accept it."  
  
Before his old adversary could react, the Doctor practically ramming the sonic screwdriver against Davros's chair, smilling as the device let out a high-pitched shrieking sound before Davros's hand struck him in the face, throwing him back to the ground.  
  
"You _dare_ to attack me?" Davros spat, glaring indignantly at the Doctor. "What made you think such a foolish plan would work? Do you not think that I would have protected my life-support systems against an attack like that before now?"  
  
"Oh, I never intended to _kill_ you, Davros," the Doctor said, grinning despite the distinctive bruise on his face as he got back to his feet. "All I did was wipe your chair's databanks."  
  
"My… databanks?" Davros repeated, looking at the chair in surprise. "How-?"  
  
"Oh, you kept that tape recorder thing for the big stuff, but you wouldn't do to all the trouble of relying on something like this and overlook the possibilities of using it to keep track of the little things," the Doctor explained, staring at his adversary with a grim smirk. "Your chair can still work and do everything you need to get around, but do you seriously expect me to believe that you can remember the _exact_ passcodes and security measures you were using at this time on your own? You might have been in stasis most of that time, but it's been a few hundred years since you were here one way or the other; I doubt that you can remember such a small detail from that far back, no matter how good your memory is."  
  
"Do you really think-?" Davros began.  
  
"I _think_ that you're in too delicate a situation already to risk putting yourself in a position where you can be shot by your own side," the Doctor countered. "You can either cut your losses and get away while you haven't done anything, or you can stay here and get shot by the people you're about to execute for disagreeing with you as an impostor; your choice."  
  
After glaring at the Doctor, Davros tapped a few controls on his chair, and was suddenly enveloped by a brilliant white light, which closed around him as though he was entering a door of some sort.  
  
"What-?" Amy began.  
  
"Emergency Temporal Shift," the Doctor said grimly. "It's a new feature I've seen some of the higher-level Daleks use recently when they're in danger, but I'm surprised Davros decided to use it; even without his chair's database wiped, he could end up anywhere."  
  
"He didn't exactly have a lot of options," Ace noted, wincing as she sat up and looked at the Time Lord. "I mean, even if you're not going to kill him, you'd never let him go, and I think even the dog could keep that bastard trapped now that you took out his hand."  
  
"Quite…" the Doctor noted, sighing grimly as he stared at the location where Davros had been just moments ago before he turned his attention back to his companions. "In any case, for the moment, I'm sorry that you got captured, Ace, and thanks for your timely assistance, Pond."  
  
"Don't worry about it," Ace said reassuringly.  
  
"Always happy to help," Amy grinned, before she adopted a more serious expression. "I managed to get a few of the civilians to start evacuating- they were a lot more willing to believe that the Kaleds might be up to something than some of the higher-ups might have been, and the paper helped convince everyone- but after a certain point… well…"  
  
"You didn't want to risk any of the aforementioned higher-ups noticing and doing anything they shouldn't," the Doctor finished for her, walking over to give his companion a brief, comforting hug. "I know, Pond… right now, all we can do is work on the finer details and hope for the best result in the end."  
  
"Right," Amy said, stifling a sniff as she smiled at the Doctor. "So, what now?"  
  
"Now, we wait inside the old girl for an hour or so, and then move her to those underground caverns," the Doctor explained. "Davros's younger self is going to be activating the Daleks soon, and I'll be heading back to the Kaled dome with Sarah and Harry shortly afterwards, so once that happens the caverns are the safer option."  
  
"Sounds like a plan," Ace said, nodding in confirmation at the Time Lord. "And then?"  
  
"Find the Cousin and get him back to the ship," the Doctor said firmly, before he looked apologetically at Ace. "Sorry; you're free to-"  
  
"Don't bother, Professor," Ace interjected as she patted the gun hanging at her side. "I might not have been here at the start, but after what that Davros sod tried to do, I'm more than willing to make sure the bugger's big work turns on him like it's meant to."  
  
"Good," the Doctor smiled thankfully at Ace.  
  
Things had been going according to plan so far, but this close to the potential finale, extra assets couldn't hurt…


	21. Preservation of Destruction

Returning to the Kaled bunker on this occasion was far less comfortable than his previous visits had been. Even if he knew that his companions were going to come through this situation relatively unharmed, it still frustrated the Doctor that he couldn't spare Sarah and Harry from Davros's attempt to torture them just to make his past self talk about the Daleks' future defeats.

He should have _known_ that Davros wouldn't give up on trying to change history if he was given the chance; he'd done it even when he hadn't _seen_ that future, so why would he have changed his attitude just because he had a better idea of the risks?

Still, at least the TARDIS had been moved to the underground passage now; once the Cousin had been dealt with and/or the Daleks had been activated on schedule, it should be simple enough for them to retreat to the lower exit. The passageway itself would become useless to the Daleks once the destruction of the hatchery blocked that path off to them as well as the destruction of the main entrance, leaving him with only the challenge of making sure the Cousin didn't do anything and that he got back to the passage before the destruction of the hatchery blocked their access.

No matter when he went to Skaro, it was always complicated…

"You OK, Professor?" Ace asked, looking anxiously at him as they reached the door that would lead back into the bunker.

"The TARDIS will be safe back there, right?" Amy asked, glancing anxiously between the way they'd come and the door facing them. "I mean, if this all goes wrong-?"

"It won't," the Doctor said, looking firmly at his current companion before he looked at his old one. "And I'm fine, Ace; it's just… this bunker… what's about to happen here…"

He sighed. "It's… a painful memory, by any definition."

"You did the right thing," Amy said, looking firmly at him, something deeper than compassion in her eyes that the Doctor chose not to analyse right now. Not responding to her statement, the Doctor turned around and opened the door back into the bunker, waiting until his companions were both inside before he began to outline his plan.

"Right then," he said, looking between the two young women, trying to focus more on the present than his past. "At this point, Davros is interrogating my past self for information about future Dalek defeats, and his assistant Nyder will later leave the recording of that interrogation in a safe in his office. I managed to destroy the tape before Davros could use it when I was here the first time, but…"

"You think the Cousin'll try to switch tapes to save the data?" Ace asked.

"Or even plant some tape of his own with some kind of subliminal programming in it that will do the job he came here to do even if we have to leave," the Doctor speculated, shaking his head grimly. "Either way, the options aren't pleasant, and it would be a neat way to change things and let my past self think everything's worked out…"

"They're still reluctant to mess with your life at this point?" Amy asked.

"The Grandfather's insane, not stupid; direct interference with our mutual timelines is still too dangerous for his current resources," the Doctor confirmed before he continued. "I can make sure he doesn't switch the tapes while everyone's away, but just in case he tries to go for the hatchery…"

"We wait there while you deal with the trickier bit?" Ace asked, looking at him in that neutral manner she'd seemingly perfected after her time in the Space Fleet.

"It's nothing against you; it's just that… well, I'll spending more time in that office later, so it's better I'm there to make sure nothing important moves around from where I remember it," the Doctor explained awkwardly, not wanting to give the impression that he doubted his friends' abilities.

"Whereas it doesn't matter much if things get messed up in an exposed corridor because there's less stuff to muck about with right now?" Ace noted, smiling slightly at her old mentor. "Fair enough."

"Take care," Amy said, smiling sympathetically at him before she and Ace turned to hurry towards the hatchery, leaving the Doctor to make his way to Davros's office.

As he walked through the currently-deserted main laboratory on his way to the office, however, the Doctor couldn't help but pause to examine the currently-abandoned workspace where his and Harry's items had been placed during their initial arrival in the Kaled bunker. Acting almost on automatic, the Doctor walked over and opened the drawer, staring at the Time Ring as it lay in the box beside his other confiscated items, almost unable to believe how strongly such a simple thing could affect him even after so long.

He'd never really liked the Time Ring as a method of time-travel- one-way journey, two-way at most, completely under the control of whoever had programmed the original temporal coordinates into the ring rather than being able to make your own choice- but right now, looking at the Ring as it lay before him, it was so hard not to just take the opportunity in front of him… just take the ring, get back to his past self's TARDIS, get to Gallifrey while it still existed, warn them about the Faction…

No.

The risk was too great.

Even if he could warn them about the Faction's power, their very nature made it hard for anyone to pin down an exact time when they could be stopped; it was hard to destroy a time period that didn't technically exist, and the Eleven-Day Empire was the closest thing the Faction had to a 'home time' even now. Preventing his infection by the biodata virus wasn't an option after Compassion and the TARDIS's efforts had effectively negated his original trip to Dust, and there was no guarantee that killing his past self would negate the Grandfather after the complex mess the Faction and he had made of their linked timelines…

As much as he wanted to see Gallifrey again, he couldn't take the risk of even a brief glimpse; things were precarious enough without him even indirectly resorting to the Grandfather's methods.

His mind made up, the Doctor walked out of the lab and continued towards Davros's office, reaching the corridor just in time to see Nyder walking out of the door, the Kaled's empty hands suggesting that he'd just dropped off the recording in the vault. Hiding in one corner until Nyder had walked past, the Doctor hurried into the office, taking a quick look inside the safe; it had been too complex for his fourth self to open on his own, but equipped with his more advanced sonic screwdriver it was easy enough to gain access.

"You're really doing that?" a voice said from behind him just as the Doctor was reaching up to examine the tape more closely.

"More like making sure you _don't_ do it," the Doctor corrected, turning around to look at the Cousin he'd encountered earlier, taking care to keep himself between his adversary and the safe behind him; it was a small thing, but he had to believe that he could hold the Cousin back if he tried anything impulsive.

"You think you're better than us because you're scared to affect what came before?" the Cousin said, looking mockingly at the Doctor. "At least we have the nerve to make changes-!"

"The only thing you and your cult have the 'nerve' to do is break stuff and find out if it's 'better' afterwards," the Time Lord countered grimly. "The Grandfather is nothing more than an angry child who makes excuses for breaking things to claim that he has some 'grand plan', and you're all nothing more than monsters who dress up your appetite for destruction by claiming there's some reason for it."

"We are freeing existence from the tyranny of Time-!"

"And replacing it with _what_?" the Doctor asked. "Chronal anarchy? Chaos over any sense of order? Even the Black Guardian recognised the _need_ for the White, even if he wanted to shift the current status quo around so that he was on top; all your sick cult believes in is your own power and screw everything else!"

"And how is _your_ philosophy any better?" the Cousin countered. "Standing by and lettings things happen because of past enforcement by some higher authority that doesn't exist any more?"

"We have to have _limits_ ," the Doctor countered. "What none of your sick cult can understand is that things only have meaning because they won't last forever; if I _could_ save everyone, how would any lives have meaning?"

"So you let people die because of some self-centred hope that things will get better?" the Cousin spat, looking sarcastically at the Time Lord. "Your morality led you to save the _Daleks_ -!"

"Because I'm not them," the Doctor said firmly. "No matter the Grandfather _wants_ me to be, I will never join you… and I will _never_ set myself up as a god because I 'think' I can make things better than they were before."

"You hesitate because you're _afraid_ ," the Cousin said coldly. "The Faction fears nothing; we can go back over everything-"

"Except that you _can't_ , remember?" the Doctor retaliated, even as he wondered how long he had until someone came by; he might be fairly sure that only Davros and Nyder used this room regularly, but that didn't mean someone couldn't come here on impulse. "You don't have the Time Lords' technology; all you have are an assortment of scattered relics that are _never_ going to be enough to let you enforce a philosophy that's all about hearing the screams and knowing you'll never be one of them."

"With the power of the Daleks-!"

At the end of his patience, and satisfied that this Cousin knew nothing more about the Faction than their essential philosophy, the Doctor lashed out with an amateurish but powerful punch that knocked the Cousin off-balance, his head striking the side of the desk before he hit the ground.

The Doctor wasn't normally in favour of violence as a solution, and he wished that his current self was more comfortable with impulsive Venusian aikido than he was- that was one thing he regretted losing from his third and eighth selves; just because he didn't like to fight didn't mean he didn't like having the option- but there were times when he could sympathise with the desire to just hit the source of your problems. Taking a moment to examine the other man, the Doctor nodded in grim approval; there was no sign of any serious damage, but he would probably be out for a few hours, which was all that he needed right now. Locking the safe behind him once again, the Doctor bent down, slung the Cousin's arm over his shoulders, and began to carry him out of the office, pausing only to grab a long coat that must have belonged to Nyder from a nearby cupboard; with the Cousin still wearing his military garb, the Doctor should be able to claim that he was taking this man to the infirmary so long as nobody realised they didn't recognise him.

Despite the weight of the Cousin slowing him down, it didn't take long for the Doctor to reach the hatchery once again, smiling at his two companions as they each took tentative glances before stepping out from their hiding-places.

"This the guy?" Ace asked, looking critically at the still-comatose Cousin.

"It's the guy," the Doctor confirmed, indicating another nearby door. "Just… help me put him in there, will you?"

"You're leaving him here?" Amy asked.

"It's not like we can just turn him over to the local authorities, Pond," the Doctor said, his tone so bitter it surprised even him as Ace opened the door for him to throw the Cousin into the room. "As it is, I've given him a decent enough knock that he should be out for a few hours, and the Faction don't have the resources to keep on trying to re-do their failures after a mission like this; if he wakes up, he'll either have time to get out before the Daleks get down here, or he'll be exterminated while they're clearing out the rest of the Kaleds, and I don't particularly care which."

Exchanging glances with Ace, Amy was relieved to see that her fellow companion was just as unnerved by the Doctor's coldness as she was; neither of them were that sympathetic to a member of the Faction, but it was still unnerving to hear the Doctor be that dismissive about another living being…

Still, as the Doctor had said, there wasn't any kind of prison they could take him to which could be guaranteed to keep a member of the Faction locked up, and they were still giving him a chance at escape even if it wasn't a very good one; it was more than any of the Faction might have done if they'd gained the advantage in this confrontation.

"Come on," the Doctor said, looking over at Amy and Ace as he sealed the storeroom door shut. "The Cousin should be secure enough down here, but we need to get out before I come down."

"Before you- oh, the _younger_ you, right?" Amy asked, correcting herself as she looked at him in understanding.

"Yes," the Doctor said, his expression solemn as he remembered what was about to happen to himself; his impossible choice about whether or not to destroy the hatchery, the Daleks completing the circuit after too many of them had been released for it to halt their entire creation, the surviving Kaleds all exterminated by the Daleks in their first great act of murder…

If he didn't get out of here soon, regardless of his promises to himself and protests to the Cousin, he wasn't sure if he could stop himself from trying to do _something_ about it.

"Actually…" Amy said, reaching out to place a hand on his shoulder, an unusually anxious expression on her face as she looked at him. "Before we leave here for good, can I just do…one last thing?"

* * *

A few hours later for the rest of the universe but just a few minutes on for herself, standing a short distance away from the now-sealed Kaled Bunker, Amy watched and waited for her moment as her gaze focused on the tall, curly-haired man in the long scarf that the Doctor had identified as his past self, standing slightly off to the side of the group of Thals and 'mutos' that had gathered around the now-concealed entrance.  
  
The Doctor had expressed his doubts about the point of her request, but after Amy had confirmed that just because he couldn't remember this happening didn't mean that it had _never_ happened, he'd conceded to her request, taking the TARDIS on a short hop into the future and a few hundred metres away from the bunker, far enough for Amy to reach it easily enough without being so near that anyone would see it who shouldn't. While the Doctor and Ace waited in the TARDIS, Amy had changed into a nondescript green jumpsuit and hurried up to the bunker to wait for the right moment, finally spotting her chance as the past Doctor walked off to one side while his companions talked with their latest allies.  
  
"Doctor?" she said, walking up from the side so that he couldn't see her until she was ready.  
  
"Yes?" the younger Doctor asked, turning towards her, only for Amy to run up and wrap her arms around him, burying her face in his chest before he could see her properly.  
  
"You did the right thing," she said, her voice trembling slightly as she made herself think about everything this man would blame himself for because of his decision today, doing everything she could to conceal anything that might make her distinctive enough to remember. "If you'd done anything else, you wouldn't be the Doctor… and we will _always_ need _the Doctor_."  
  
It was a small moment of comfort, and she knew that the man she was talking to would probably never understand who she was or why she'd done this for several centuries, but it was all that she could offer him.  
  
Besides… as he awkwardly raised his own arms to squeeze her back, his manner slightly uncomfortable as though he wasn't used to this sort of expression of affection… Amy felt that he'd understood enough.  
  
"You did the right thing," Amy said one last time, giving the Fourth Doctor a final squeeze before she turned around and ran back towards the TARDIS, confident that the younger Doctor wouldn't follow her.  
  
It was a small thing, but considering what the Doctor would endure in the future when thinking about the decision he'd made today, she wanted to give him something positive to remember.

* * *

"Well," the Doctor said, as the three of them walked out of the TARDIS, "here we are; Paris, 1900, just as requested."  
  
"1900?" Amy repeated, looking at Ace in surprise. "You _live_ here?"  
  
"It's actually fairly comfy," Ace smiled, as she wheeled her Time Hopper out of the TARDIS and into a corner of the sparsely-decorated room with a view of the Eiffel Tower. "Spent enough time in the TARDIS that language isn't an issue, no need to worry about paperwork or surveillance, and I'm past the worst parts of the history of the place."  
  
"Fair enough," Amy nodded.  
  
"Talking of the worst parts," the Doctor said, looking cautiously at Ace, "considering the scale of what we're dealing with…"  
  
"I'm not coming with you."  
  
"What?" the Doctor said, looking at his old friend in a hurt manner.  
  
"It's nothing personal, Professor," Ace said, smiling warmly at the Time Lord. "Believe me, it's been great spending time with you again, and Ames here's great company… but with the Faction out there now, I think it's better for us if we just… keep up a few different angles of attack against those pricks."  
  
"So… you think you can keep up a second front?" Amy asked.  
  
"Bingo," Ace said, before she turned back to the Doctor with a slight shrug. "Besides… no offence, but it's weird to think of you as the Professor when you look more like my brother than my dad."  
  
The Doctor could only smile at that statement as he looked at the other woman for a moment, before he walked over to give her a comforting hug.  
  
"You'll be fine," he said, as he stepped back from his old companion once again. "After all… you're my daughter."  
  
As the Doctor and Ace smiled warmly at each other, as much as she appreciated the knowledge that the current TARDIS dynamic wouldn't change- even if she had liked getting to know the other woman- Amy suddenly wasn't sure how she felt about it.  
  
On the one hand, she was grateful that the Doctor had such a close but platonic relationship with his old companion (And she would _not_ consider why the fact that their relationship was platonic was so important to her), but on the other hand, considering how old he would have been when he'd travelled with Ace, and the fact that he was so much older now…  
  
Could he ever see her the way she wanted him to?


	22. The Land of Dreams

Looking out of the window, Amy smiled as she saw the TARDIS materialise in the garden of her Leadworth house, landing on the rockery that her husband had set up just last month; ever since he'd settled down to be there for the baby's birth, he kept on trying to keep himself occupied with various new projects.

On the one hand, he'd probably be annoyed that the TARDIS had damaged all his hard work, but on the other hand, he'd appreciate the chance to do it all over again…

" _Pond_!" the Doctor grinned as he walked into the house, looking down at her expanded stomach with a startled smile. "You've swallowed a planet?"

"I'm _pregnant_ , dummy!" Amy countered, smiling at this reminder of his alien 'naiveté'- she was never sure if some of the things he said were just him joking or if he genuinely didn't realise what kind of state she was in- as she gave him a hug. "Oh, it's good to see you…"

"Same to you," the Doctor grinned, before looking curiously at her. "Where's your other half?"

"Out for a bit," Amy shrugged. "Needed to go and get… something; I wasn't really paying attention when he started talking that quickly…"

"Fair enough," the Doctor noted, nodding in understanding before he wandered out of the garden, leaving Amy to walk after him as fast as her pregnant belly would allow. "Ah, Leadworth; vibrant as ever."

"It's Upper Leadworth, actually; we moved a bit," Amy said, shrugging slightly as she noted how quiet the whole place currently was. "And… OK, it's quiet, but it's restful and healthy; seemed like a good place to bring up the baby after all that chaos…"

"Well, don't let that get you down," the Doctor smiled.

"It's not," Amy countered.

"Well, I wanted to see how you were," the Doctor shrugged, as he and Amy sat down on a nearby bench. "I mean, you know me, I'm not going to just drop you off that easily; I'm for life once you know me…"

"You had no control over coming here, did you?" Amy chuckled.

"Not as such," the Doctor confirmed with a sigh before he leaned back and studied his surroundings. "Still, this is nice… OK, this is a nice wall, nice house, nice town… how do you pass the time here?"

"Relax, mainly," Amy said, patting her stomach. "After all, we have to focus on the new generation, right?"

"Always a good move," the Doctor smiled, looking at her in a particularly thoughtful manner before something caught his attention. "Oh, and there's the birds…"

"Yeah, we didn't have a lot of _birds_ in the TARDIS…" Amy began, before she suddenly moved over to sit against the wall, staring over at the blue box as her eyes closed…

* * *

As their eyes opened, Amy found herself looking at the currently-dismantled K9 as he stood on the floor of the TARDIS console room, the Doctor lying slumped against the TARDIS railings beside the robot dog.  
  
She suddenly wasn't sure what had happened here; the Doctor had just been working to repair some of K9's damaged circuitry after Davros had hit him with some kind of 'EMP grenade', and then they'd both dozed off during the work…  
  
"What was that?" the Doctor said, looking sharply around the console before his gaze focused on Amy. "Oh, thank God you're all right; I had a terrible nightmare about you- don't ask what it was, you don't want to know- but you're all right now…"  
  
"Uh… right…" Amy said, looking uncertainly at him. "Do you normally just… drop off like that?"  
  
"Well, I'm not exactly a spring chicken any more, Pond; the occasional nap's only to be expected," the Doctor said, shrugging slightly as he stood up. "Now then, what's wrong with the console? Red flashing lights; they must mean _something_ …"  
  
"Did your dream involve… me being back in Leadworth?" Amy asked, looking uncertainly at the Doctor as she got to her feet. "And… being pregnant?"  
  
The shaken expression on the Doctor's face at her question confirmed her theory better than if he'd actually said the words.  
  
"We're… having the same dream?" Amy asked, deciding to leave the idea that the Doctor thought of her returning to Leadworth as a 'nightmare' for later. "How does that work?"  
  
"Psychic episode, jumped a time track… point is, there _are_ possibilities," the Doctor said, shrugging dismissively. "Anyway, we're back in reality now…"  
  
"If we're in reality," Amy said, looking up as she heard the sound of twittering birds from up above, "why can I still hear the birds?"

* * *

As she 'woke up' back in Leadworth, Amy didn't know if the relocation or the extra 'weight' she suddenly gained was the most disconcerting part of this whole experience; everything just felt so _vivid_ right now…  
  
"Did we both just dream that we were back on the TARDIS?" she asked, looking over at the Doctor.  
  
"And we thought that _this_ was the dream while we were there, yes," the Doctor confirmed, standing up and looking around the village thoughtfully. "This could be difficult…"  
  
"But… aren't we awake now?" Amy asked, even as she guessed what the Doctor would say to that.  
  
"You thought you were awake before," the Time Lord said grimly. "From now on, trust nothing you see, hear, or feel."  
  
"You mean… we can't be sure if we're awake or asleep?"  
  
"To be precise, we can't be sure if we're home or dreaming," the Doctor confirmed, staring grimly around himself. "Are we flashing forwards or backwards, that is the question…?"  
  
He looked up, a resolute expression on his face before he glanced back at Amy. "Hold on tight; this is going to be a tricky one."  
  
Before Amy could ask what that meant, she suddenly felt incredibly tired…

* * *

"Oh, this is bad," the Doctor mused, anxiously studying the console as he woke up back in the TARDIS. "I don't like this…"  
  
"Problem?" Amy asked, unable to resist the urge to add a slightly teasing comment. "I mean, beyond the usual routine with this old thing… do you need the manual?"  
  
"I threw it in a supernova," the Doctor said firmly.  
  
"Pardon?" Amy said, looking at him in surprise. "Why would you throw a manual in a supernova?"  
  
"Because I disagreed with it after Romana tried to insist I pass my Time Travel Proficiency test; who needs official qualifications after five hundred or so years' practical experience?" the Doctor said in frustration. "I mean, there's some operating systems thing I left in a deeper cupboard somewhere, but that's just a reminder of what bit of her does what rather than trying to tell me how to use it…"  
  
"OK, but couldn't that tell us what might be making us dream about the future?" Amy asked.  
  
"And who's to say that's what's happening?" the Doctor pointed out, glancing back at Amy. "Right now, we have no way of knowing which of the situations we're facing here is a dream or the reality, and we have to remember that we're dealing with an adversary that loves playing with perceptions and histories that may or may not happen or have ever happened…"  
  
Amy felt a sudden chill at the reminder of their real problem in this universe that she and the Doctor travelled in.  
  
"The Faction?" she said anxiously. "You think they're responsible for this?"  
  
"One way or the other, it fits their pattern," the Doctor said grimly. "Either showing us a possible future that we're tempted to change or avoid for some reason even when we _know_ it's going to happen, or trying to wipe out that future by putting us in a position to unwittingly alter our past… however you look at it, this situation practically _screams_ Faction."  
  
Amy tried not to shudder at that thought; even if she had only met a couple of Cousins in the Faction rather than anyone more high-ranking, those men had been intimidating enough when all they were trying to do was change things the old-fashioned way. If they were dealing with a Faction agent capable of something like this…  
  
"So… how do we work out what's what?" she asked anxiously.  
  
"Good question, to which I don't have as good an answer," the Doctor said grimly. "Most of the old girl's 'records' of her time as the Edifice were fried, so we can't using anything she picked up from that time to search for Faction influence while we have access to her, and we each think we're awake in whatever situation we're in at the moment, so right now just assume that you're awake in whatever one you're in and take it all from there."  
  
"Can't we just… work out what doesn't fit and identify the dream from that?" Amy asked.  
  
"With the Faction potentially involved?" the Doctor said grimly. "We're dealing with some very strange situations these days, Pond; even reality is probably unusual right now."  
  
"When I'm travelling in a police box that's bigger on the inside than the outside and my new friend is a robot dog from the year 5000?" Amy noted, trying to lighten the mood as she smiled at the Time Lord. "Yeah, things _are_ pretty weird in my life right now."  
  
"Valid point…" the Doctor mused, before the lights around them suddenly cut off, followed by the sound of birdsong. "Just remember, treat both as real until we know what's going on…"

* * *

"And there's no way to _know_ that this is the real one?" Amy asked as she stood up, looking uncertainly at the Doctor as she held one hand over her swollen stomach. "I mean, this _feels_ pretty real…"  
  
"You never know you're dreaming when you're in a dream," the Doctor noted, waving his hand experimentally in front of his face. "No sign of motion blur, so I don't think we're in a computer simulation…"  
  
"Hello, Mrs Bowman," an old woman said as she walked past the two.  
  
"Bowman?" the Doctor said, looking at Amy in surprise.  
  
"I _am_ married," Amy pointed out with a slight smile.  
  
"Yes, yes, it's just…" the Doctor said, voice trailing off as he thoughtfully tapped his chin. "Bowman… Bowman… why does that name ring a bell… what does he do again?"  
  
"He's a doctor," Amy said, expression faltering for a moment before she shrugged. "Just a GP, but he likes the personal touch; mainly keeps an eye on the old folks' home."  
  
"Keeps him busy, does it?"  
  
"Actually, yes," Amy noted. "Everyone here just seems to keep on living; the life expectancy's… well, it's very good…"  
  
"Interesting…" the Doctor said, just as the sound of birdsong filled the air once again, leaving the two of them to hurry over to a nearby wall before they fell asleep once again.

* * *

"Can we just stay _put_ for a few more minutes?" Amy asked, shaking her head in disorientation as she sat back up, only to start shivering. "And it's getting colder here all of a sudden…"  
  
"The heating's off," the Doctor said, glancing between the TARDIS console and K9. "K9's in no state to be reactivated yet, so he can't compensate for anything that's been turned off…"  
  
"What else is off?" Amy asked.  
  
"Everything," the Doctor said grimly. "Sensors, core power… we're drifting, and we can't even see outside because the scanner's off; something is overriding my controls."  
  
"Well, that took a while," another voice suddenly said. "Honestly, after everything I'd heard from the Grandfather, I expected more."  
  
Spinning around to face the source of the voice, Amy wasn't sure if she should scream or laugh. The speaker seemed to be a short, slightly overweight man with a receding hairline and large circular glasses, wearing a bow tie and dark trousers along with a tweed jacket. Under other circumstances, Amy would have dismissed him as an eccentric, much like the Doctor, except for the fact that he was wearing some kind of 'armour' on his upper body that put Amy disturbingly in mind of a particularly thick rib-cage, followed by something on his head that looked almost like a skull.  
  
"Who are you?" the Doctor said firmly. "And what are you doing in my TARDIS?"  
  
"What shall we call me?" the other man said reflectively. "Well, if you're the Time Lord, let's call me the Dream Lord."  
  
"And what's with that look?" Amy asked, trying to conceal her anxiety as she indicated the bones he was wearing.  
  
"What else should I wear when on a mission for the Grandfather?" the Dream Lord smiled.  
  
"Grandfather?" Amy repeated anxiously. "As in… the Faction?"  
  
" _Knew_ it," the Doctor said, eyes narrowing as he looked at the man. "So what rank are you? Cousin, Little Brother, Brother-?"  
  
"Father," the Dream Lord said firmly.  
  
"Ah," the Doctor said, rolling his eyes slightly. "I'd be impressed, but Dream Lord… it's all in the name, isn't it; not _quite_ there…"  
  
Before Amy could realise what he was doing, he'd reached into his pocket and threw something at the Dream Lord, nodding in confirmation as whatever he'd thrown simply passed through the other man. "What are we talking here; psychic projection or hologram?"  
  
"All that matters to you is that I _am_ here," the Dream Lord said firmly.  
  
"And sticking us between reality and illusions?" Amy asked. "What's the point of that?"  
  
"To see your choice," the Dream Lord said solemnly, looking at Amy with a brief grin before he turned back to the Doctor. "And you should really see _her_ dreams, Doctor; I'd blush if I had a blood supply."  
  
"What's the point of this cheap cabaret act?" the Doctor interjected, uninterested in hearing anything that thing had to say about Amy's subconscious; what her mind came up with at night should be her business alone.  
  
"Me?" the Dream Lord said, his mocking tone becoming colder as he glared at the Time Lord. "If you had any more tawdry quirks you could open up a Tawdry Quirk Shop. The madcap vehicle, the cockamamie hair, the clothes designed by a first-year fashion student, and now you've reacquired the little space dog just to ram home what an intergalactic wag you are… Where was I?"  
  
"You were-" Amy began.  
  
"I know where I was," the Dream Lord continued dismissively. "So, here's your challenge; two worlds, here in the time machine, and there, in the village time forgot. One is real, the other's fake, and just to make it more interesting, you're going to face threats in both worlds, only one of which is real."  
  
"But-" Amy tried to interject.  
  
"It's time to sleep," the Dream Lord chuckled, as birdsong filled the air once again. "Or are you waking up?"


	23. The Other Doctor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a twist here, but considering that we all know what the Dream Lord really was, I felt that it would be a nice opportunity to incorporate my personal favourite into this story.

"Oh dear dear dear," the Dream Lord said, standing over the Doctor and Amy as they woke up in Leadworth once again, the Dream Lord studying some kind of X-ray in his hands, the simplicity of the image at odds with the Faction armour he was still wearing. "This is very, very bad. Look at this X-ray; your brain is completely see-through… but then, I've always been able to see through you, Doctor."

"Always?" Amy repeated, looking suspiciously at their new foe. "What do you mean, always?"

"Now then," the Dream Lord said, ignoring Amy's attempt to question him, "the prognosis is this. If you die in the dream, you wake up in reality. Healthy recovery in next to no time. Ask me what happens if you die in reality?"

"We die, naturally," Amy said bluntly, as she glared at the Dream Lord. "Just answer the question; who are you? How do you know the Doctor?"

"Oh, our boy here gets around a bit, but you've got bigger concerns right now," the Dream lord chuckled. "You've got a world to choose; one reality was always too much for you, Doctor, so take two and call me in the morning."

With that, the Dream Lord vanished, leaving the Doctor and Amy to stare anxiously at each other for a moment.

"Before you ask," the Doctor said at last, "despite his human appearance, I don't know who or what he is right now; the Faction's agents aren't always limited to reality as we understand it, after all."

"OK…" Amy said, trying not to show her fear as she glanced at her surroundings. "So… we've got no power in the TARDIS in that world, but what's the 'deadly danger' in this one? And why is he attacking us this way?"

"Could be the lack of physical form," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "That gets you down after a while, so he's taking it out on folk like us who can touch and eat and feel…"

He shook his head in frustration. "We just don't have enough to work with… and where has everyone gone?"

"What?" Amy said, looking around her in surprise before she realised what the Doctor was talking about; the street had been fairly busy before they 'dozed off', but now it was virtually deserted. "Where'd everyone go?"

"One of the many questions we're facing right now," the Doctor said grimly. "OK, so, when assessing the mechanics of this reality split, time asleep exactly matches time in the dream world, which isn't normal for conventional dreams…"

"And there's the fact that we're dreaming the same thing at the same time," Amy noted.

"Yes, the communal trance; very rare, very complicated, so there's got to be some kind of giveaway in one world or another…" the Doctor said, shaking his head in frustration before he slapped his forehead. "But it's not working because this village is so _dull_! I'm slowing down-!"

"OK, you can't go _there_ , all right?" Amy said firmly. "I'm dealing with enough with this baby; you don't get to insult my life!"

"Sorry," the Doctor said, shaking his head in frustration before a new strain of birdsong filled the air.

"Here we go…" Amy groaned.

* * *

"It's really cold," Amy said, looking anxiously around the TARDIS as they 'woke up' in the ship once again. "Have you got any warm clothing?"  
  
"What does it matter if we're cold?" the Doctor said, indicating the storage areas underneath the console as he hurried down the stairs. "We have to know what's going on here… there should be some stuff down there; have a look…"  
  
"What do we do?" Amy asked.  
  
"Give me a few moments to put some kind of power supply together, and try and find some blankets somewhere," the Doctor said, focusing on the more immediate issue facing him right now. "Until we know which is the problem, we have to treat both worlds as real, so we have to treat both threats accordingly…"  
  
As her mentor set to work with whatever gadgetry he could put together under the console, Amy could only sit against the railing with her arms wrapped around herself as she tried to work out what she could do next.  
  
However she looked at it, the life she was currently living just made more… _sense_ as the real one; she might feel happy in the Upper Leadworth world, but why would she ever give up all _this_?  
  
 _Unless I finally moved on…_  
  
She didn't like to think about that possibility, but as she looked down at the Doctor, grabbing seemingly random objects and sticking them together in some manner that only made sense to him, she couldn't help but wonder if that was it.  
  
Had she decided to leave the TARDIS because she'd decided that it was time to make her own life… or because she'd been rejected and had to leave to move on?  
  
The Doctor might have been treating her friendly enough so far during their time in the future, but he wasn't exactly someone who'd show that he'd been hurt…  
  
The sound of someone walking up behind her prompted her to turn around, her eyes widening in shock at the sight of a tall man with surprisingly long brown hair wearing a deep green velvet trench coat and a bronze-grey waistcoat over wrinkled tan trousers and brown Calvary boots.  
  
"Need any help?" the man asked, smiling politely at her.  
  
"Who-?" Amy began.  
  
" _You_?" the Doctor said, looking incredulously at the new arrival despite the box of stuff in his arms. "What are _you_ doing here?"  
  
"When you're in hiding from a cult of temprocidal maniacs as the last of your species, you take note when you detect a TARDIS in a situation like this," the man smiled at the Doctor, before he looked at Amy. "Oh, I'm the Doctor."  
  
"The… the Doctor?" Amy repeated, looking between the two men for a moment before her eyes widened in understanding. "You're a _younger_ Doctor?"  
  
"The Eighth, to be exact," the other man- the other _Doctor_ \- smiled at her before glancing back at the Doctor. "Which are you?"  
  
"Eleventh," the Doctor said grimly, marching past his younger self and sticking something from the box on the side of the monitor. "And if you aren't here to take us away, leave."  
  
"I can't," the other Doctor said, looking politely at his future self. "I was able to establish a time corridor connecting our TARDISes, but I already checked and I can't get back to my ship; all I _can_ do is help you here."  
  
"And what a _fantastic_ help you'll be," the Dream Lord said, as he appeared once again.  
  
"Ah," the younger Doctor said, glancing over at his future self. "Your problem, I take it?"  
  
"He calls himself 'the Dream Lord'," the Doctor explained, staring grimly at the older man.  
  
"I see," the Eighth Doctor said, grimly studying the other man. "So you're the best that the Faction has to offer these days?"  
  
"Says the man who once held the essence of the Grandfather and now doesn't even know what you're saving him from," the Dream Lord chuckled mockingly. "Check that."  
  
With that, the mysterious older man vanished once again just as the TARDIS scanner activated, revealing what looked like a blue star  
  
"What's that?" Amy asked.  
  
"A cold star," the two Doctors said simultaneously.  
  
"That's why we're freezing," the Doctor said. "It's not a heating malfunction; we're drifting towards a cold star. That's our deadly danger for this version of reality."  
  
"So… that means this is the fake?" Amy asked, indicating the Eighth Doctor and the cold star on the screen uncertainly. "I mean, no offence if I'm wrong, but stars can't freeze, and you already told me that meeting yourself wasn't possible without the Time Lords helping out, so if he's… _here_ while we're facing an impossible problem-"  
  
"Not necessarily," the Doctor interjected, looking over at his younger self with a smile. "Most of the time, we _do_ need the Time Lords to allow the TARDIS to bypass the usual restrictions so that I can visit somewhere where we are already, but there are ways around that; I accidentally arranged for my visit to Dust when I was performing various temporal equations, and there was another occasion when three of me were brought together by an ancient being known as the Temperon to stop an invasion of Gallifrey…"  
  
"Oh yes, the Sirens of Time; that wasn't exactly fun," the Eighth Doctor said, reaching down to rub at his left leg before he looked between the other two. "What was that about 'deadly danger in this version of reality'?"  
  
"I'll explain later," the Doctor said, just as birdsong filled the TARDIS once again. "In the meantime, see what you can do to stabilise the old girl…"

* * *

"OK," Amy said, looking around Leadworth and confirming that there was no sign of the Eighth Doctor, "we're here and he's not, so he's a dream who's been left in the TARDIS, right?"  
  
"Still doesn't prove anything, unfortunately," the Doctor shrugged. "It would be nice if it was that easy, but we don't know how the Dream Lord's influence works; maybe he's like Prisoner Zero and needed some time to form a psychic link between us to trap us in the dream."  
  
"But if the other guy's _you_ -"  
  
"He was me four hundred years and four lives ago; I've changed a lot since then in every way," the Doctor countered, before pausing to shake his head in frustration. "I'm sorry, it's just… well, I went through a lot when I was him, and…"  
  
"Oh," Amy said, eyes widening as inspiration hit her. "He's the one who… almost became the Grandfather?"  
  
The Doctor's silent stare was all the response she needed that she'd remembered her friend's tales correctly, even as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver to scan the strange piles of dust that had suddenly appeared around the village green since they'd last been in this 'world'.  
  
"I'm… sorry," Amy said, stuck for a more adequate response. "But… I mean, it's not like it was his _fault_ -"  
  
" _I know that, Pond_!" the Doctor said, turning around to yell at her before he forced himself to calm down. "I'm sorry, it's just… after everything that he went through… everything he had to _do_ … seeing him again, well…"  
  
He shook his head in frustration, but then his gaze settled on something down the street as he stopped scanning with the sonic and stood up with a grim expression. "Playtime's definitely over now."  
  
"What?" Amy asked, following the Doctor's gaze to see a large group of old people walking towards them, just as she began to consider the implications of the piles of dust in what had been an inhabited playground just a few moments ago. "Oh no…"  
  
"Indeed," the Doctor said grimly, as he studied the assembled pensioners before them. "Whatever's going on here, it definitely involves _them_ …"


	24. The Truth Behind the Dream

"We're being attacked by old people?" Amy looked at the Doctor incredulously. "I mean, not to sound age-ist or anything, but that's not that much of a _threat_ …"

"Anything can be a problem in the right circumstances, Pond; I once encountered a human colony in the far future that was basically ruled by a lump of seaweed," the Doctor said, tightening his grip on the sonic screwdriver as he looked at the approaching pensioners.

"Attack of the old people?" the Dream Lord suddenly said, appearing beside them with a mocking grin. "Well, that settles it; this must be the dream, right? What do you think, Amy? Jump under a bus and wake up in the TARDIS?"

"Leave her alone," the Doctor said, turning to glare coldly at the man in bone and tweed.

"Still trying to be the tall dark hero, mmm?" the Dream Lord asked mockingly. "When we all know what you're really about, don't we, Doctor?"

"Stop it," the Doctor said, glaring at the Dream Lord.

"You just need to acknowledge the truth behind all your bluster," the Dream Lord continued, his tone still mocking as he glared at the Time Lord. "Defend it all you like, but in the end, you just keep them around so that you've got someone to make you feel great after everything else you've lost…"

"It's not like that…" the Doctor began, before his eyes widened in realisation. "So _that's_ who you are."

"What?" Amy looked at the Doctor in surprise. "You know who he is?"

"It wasn't hard," the Doctor said, critically studying the Dream Lord. "I don't know you got here looking like this, but there's only one person in the universe who could hate me like that…"

"Never mind me," the Dream Lord said, unconcerned about the Doctor's announcement. "Maybe you should worry about them."

Glancing back at the approaching old people, the Doctor winced at the sight; he'd fought apparent pensioners before- that mess with the Alzhiemers' clinic and the Tulkan warlords sprang to mind, even if he'd never actually fought them before Sooal killed them- but there was a difference between aliens that happened to look old and old people being used by aliens…

"Get ready to run," he glanced over at Amy.

"Like _this_?" Amy countered, indicating her pregnant self. "Can't we just talk to them?"

Her question was apparently answered when the nearest group opened their mouths to reveal a strange kind of eye inside them, the eye looking at them from the mouth like something was peering out from inside the body.

"That's… not just an eye, is it?" Amy asked anxiously.

"Correct; that's the eye of whatever's inside them," the Doctor confirmed grimly. "They must have been here for years, living and waiting…"

With that said, he stepped forward, glaring between the various old people gathered around him. "OK then, talk to me; you are the Ekodines, a proud, ancient race who should be better than this, so what are you doing here?"

"We were driven from our planet by-" one of the creatures began.

"By upstart neighbours," the Doctor finished for them.

"So we have-" another creature began.

"Been living here inside the bodies of old humans for years," the Doctor finished once again

"No wonder they live so long. You're keeping them alive."

"We were humbled and destroyed," the first speaker continued. "Now we will do the same to others."

"OK," the Doctor said, hoping that the 'Dream Lord' couldn't penetrate too deeply into his mind. "Makes sense, I suppose; could be real…"

As one of the creatures suddenly exhaled over a passing cyclist and the young man on the bike fell into dust, the Doctor didn't hesitate; grabbing Amy by the shoulders, he turned and ran back along the street, Amy's pace faltering slightly due to her pregnancy even as she made a fair effort to keep up.

"Hide in there!" the Doctor yelled, pausing outside her house as he glanced back at the distant form of the pensioners. "I'll draw their attention; just keep going!"

Under other circumstances, Amy liked to think that she would have protested at being forced aside like this, but when she had to consider the child inside her and the practical issue that she was too slow like this, she simply nodded in acceptance of the Doctor's order before she dived into the house. With the door locked behind her, all she could do for was lean against it and take a few deep breathes to calm herself until the sound of footsteps had faded from outside her house.

"Oh God…" she groaned, wishing that she could bend over properly right now. "I _hate_ this…"

"Poor little Amy," the Dream Lord said, appearing before her in his twisted bone-and-tweed outfit, smirking mockingly once again. "He always leaves you, doesn't he, alone in the dark? Never apologises-"

"He doesn't have to," Amy said firmly, standing as firmly as she could in her condition.

"Good, because he never will," the Dream Lord said. "And now he's left you with me. Spooky old, not to be trusted me; anything could happen-"

"Who are you?" Amy asked (She wasn't going to rise to the bait; the Doctor had two threats to deal with and he didn't know this twisted bastard was here anyway). "The Doctor knows you, but he hasn't told me yet… and since he always tells me what we're dealing with eventually, you're something different."

"Oh, you think he trusts you?" the Dream Lord asked mockingly. "You think you're the only girl in the universe-"

"I _know_ I'm not the only one; I just know that I'm _one_ of them-"

"But you think there's more to it than that, don't you?" the Dream Lord asked, smirking at her. "Or at least, you think there should be…"

Amy wasn't going to respond to that statement; whichever of these two worlds they were in was the dream world or the real world, she wasn't going to say anything about how she felt about the Doctor to this _prick_ before she said anything to him.

"If you really think that, then answer me this," the Dream Lord said firmly. "What's his name?"

"And?" Amy asked, after giving the Dream Lord a moment to elaborate on his question.

"If he won't even tell you-"

" _Nobody_ knows his name!" Amy said, laughing incredulously as the Dream Lord looked curiously at her, almost as though he was studying her reaction. "Even the girl he openly declared was practically his _daughter_ doesn't know his name! For God's sake, he once told me he isn't even sure he _remembers_ his original name any more! He doesn't _need_ a name; he's the Doctor, and that's more than your sick psycho cult leader will ever have!"

"The Grandfather has his Family-"

"No, what he has is a bunch of twisted monsters who think it's fun to smash things," Amy said coldly, disgusted at the idea that the Faction could be anything like a true family. "All they know how to do is break stuff because the world was mean to them; if the Grandfather was any kind of 'father' to them, he'd help them be _better_ than that, not encourage the worst parts of them!"

"And that's what the Doctor does to you?" the Dream Lord asked, frustrating unaffected by Amy's anger. "He took you away from any chance at a normal life-"

"Which I clearly got _back_ again, if you haven't-!" Amy began, before she noticed a photograph on one wall and her eyes widened in shock.

The white dress she was wearing in the photo would have made it obvious that it was a picture of her wedding to even an idiot, but the face beside her who could only be the groom made it obvious that she was currently in the dream.

She knew that there was a theory that everyone had a doppelganger, and the Doctor himself had mentioned that he'd met a dictator from Earth's not-too-distant future who was the exact double of his second body while one of his old companions had practically been the twin of Queen Anne of France, but Amy seriously doubted that she'd married a man who looked exactly like the Doctor's eighth self by sheer coincidence.

"Seriously?" she said, taking the photograph off the wall and virtually shoving it into the Dream Lord's face. "You make _him_ the groom and you thought I wouldn't notice?"

"Were you likely to look at it?" the Dream Lord asked, shrugging in a dismissive manner, as though his deception being exposed was of no real concern. "After all, the dream still gave you what you want-"

"If you think that, you're even more weird than I thought you were," Amy countered firmly.

"Am I?" the Dream Lord asked, raising an eyebrow as he looked at Amy in a very pointed manner. "You do know that the Doctor can never love you out there-"

"And I'd never ask him to," Amy said firmly, taking care to ignore the pain in her heart as she finally voiced what she'd tried not to think about. "The Doctor cares about everyone he meets in his travels; he's particularly fond of everyone who travels with him, but I'm not going to kid myself into thinking that I'm going to make more of an impression on him just because I'm the one there now."

"Then why-?"

"Because just being _part_ of the Doctor's world is worth every last bit of heartache I'll have to deal with until it's time to move on, and doing that with some guy who reminds me that much of him would just be insulting both of us," Amy said resolutely. "And if you can't understand that… that just proves everything I was saying about the Grandfather."

With that statement, she grabbed her car keys and left the house, getting into the driver's seat as quickly as she could; she didn't know if this kind of position would be safe for the baby or not, but since the pregnancy wasn't real this wasn't the time to worry about that. Grimly starting the engine, she took the car out of the drive and headed down the street that the Doctor had hurried along just a few moments ago, relieved when she passed through the gathering of old people without a fight; she might know they weren't real, but she still didn't want to run anyone over. Quickly spotting the Doctor outside a butcher's shop, she brought the car to a halt, grateful when the Doctor dived into the passenger side.

"Not that I'm not glad to see you, Pond, but-" the Doctor began.

"Sorry, can't talk; we've got a car to crash," Amy said, turning the car around and heading back downt he street towards her house.

"Uh… Pond?" the Doctor asked uncertainly. "What are you doing?"

"Getting us out of the dream," Amy said firmly, the wall shattering in front of her as she approached the house-

* * *

"Ah, good, there you are," the Eighth Doctor's voice said, giving Amy the extra spark she needed to open her eyes and sit up, looking around an icy but still relatively comfortable TARDIS. "How were things in… well, the other place?"  
  
"That was the dream," Amy said, looking at the Eighth Doctor with a brief smile that she hoped didn't give away how awkward she felt about that last clue; the idea that she'd fantasised on some level about being _married_ to this man…  
  
"And with only seconds left," the Dream Lord put in, smiling over at them from the corner. "Well done."  
  
As though those words had been a cue, the TARDIS suddenly became warmer, the lighting returning to normal as the past Doctor helped his future self and Amy back to their feet.  
  
"I hope you've enjoyed your little fictions," the Dream Lord said, looking at the three of them with a growing smirk.  
  
"If that's your idea of enjoyment, that just proves my point about your precious 'Grandfather'," Amy said, looking coldly at him. "What he does to his enemies might be twisted, but if you think that was enjoyable you're a bigger mess than I thought."  
  
"Hear hear," the Eighth Doctor said, nodding in approval of Amy's assessment as he walked up to stand beside his future companion. "One of the many things that the Grandfather cannot understand any more, Dream Lord; he's a leader in the sense that he coordinates the Faction's efforts to break the world, and nothing more."  
  
"No real sense of inspiring anything from anyone that doesn't just involve torture, death, and at least the risk of breaking things he doesn't truly understand; the Grandfather all over, in my experience," the Doctor said, staring at the Dream Lord. "And what was the point of all this, anyway?"  
  
"To make you think," the Dream Lord said, before he vanished from the TARDIS.  
  
"OK," Amy said, looking uncertainly at the two Doctors and the still-dismantled K9. "What… was that all about?"  
  
"Just give me a moment," the Doctor said, walking over to the console with a nonchalant smile. "Right now, I have to destroy the TARDIS."  
  
" _What_?" Amy and the Eighth Doctor said at once.  
  
"Didn't you notice how helpful the Dream Lord was?" the Doctor said, hands rapidly moving over the console. "OK, there was misinformation, red herrings, malice, and I could have done without the limerick. But he was always very keen to make us choose between dream and reality."  
  
"And why would a Faction agent _tell_ you how to get out of a trap unless it was to direct you away from the _real_ trap…?" the Eighth Doctor said, nodding in understanding before he looked curiously at the Doctor. "So why was I here?"  
  
"Muddy the waters, increase my sense of danger, some side-effect of him being here, the fact that I associate you with the Faction on such a fundamental level given that we were infected with the virus because of you; possibilities are endless, really," the Doctor said, as the ship began to shake around them.  
  
"But-?" Amy began.  
  
"Star burning cold? Do me a favour," the Doctor said firmly. "The Dream Lord, by _definition_ , couldn't have any power in the real world; he just wanted to make us choose between two dreams!"  
  
"How do you know that?" Amy asked desperately.  
  
"Because I know who he is," the Doctor replied, smiling at his companion just as the TARDIS exploded around them…

* * *

Waking up once again, Amy took a moment to check her surroundings before she decided to just enjoy the sensation of the TARDIS floor under her back; she doubted that K9 would still be in pieces if they'd actually died, so it looked like the Doctor's theory had been correct. Hearing the TARDIS door open, she glanced up to see the Doctor standing at the open door, looking out into deep space, something small and yellow on his palm.  
  
"Uh… what's that?" she asked, as she got back to her feet.  
  
"A speck of psychic pollen from the candle meadows of Karass don Slava; must have been hanging around for ages," the Doctor mused. "Fell in the time rotor, heated up and induced a dream state for all of us."  
  
With those words, he blew on his palm and the yellow thing was tossed into space, the Time Lord casually closing the door behind him.  
  
"So… that was the Dream Lord?" Amy asked.  
  
"No, no, sorry; wasn't it obvious?" the Doctor said, looking at her in surprise. "The Dream Lord was me."  
  
" _You_?" Amy repeated.  
  
"Psychic pollen is a mind parasite; it feeds on your darker impulses, gives them a voice, and turns them against you… and with the Faction as a factor, I have a _lot_ for it to go on."  
  
"So… that's why the Dream Lord was all 'Faction-y' and wearing tweed?" Amy asked. "He's like… what you'd be if you became the Grandfather _now_?"  
  
"Probably; before the Grandfather, my dark side was basically a lawyer," the Doctor said, smiling slightly at the memory before he shrugged. "Anyway, that's where he came from, and that's him out of the way now."  
  
"But… if that was all a dream, what was the other you doing there?"  
  
"That pollen has a lot of energy; bringing in someone else was the best way to stop the scenario becoming so dream-like we'd notice it," the Doctor shrugged. "Like I speculated, he was there because I subconsciously associate him with the Faction more than any of them; the virus was just an unfortunate bit of timing, and I don't _consciously_ blame him for anything, but that's the way it is."  
  
"And…" Amy began, looking uncertainly at the Doctor for a moment before she trailed off, suddenly uncertain if she wanted to ask for more.  
  
Right now, she could leave everything that had happened as the Dream Lord just being a twisted piece of the Doctor's psyche attacking them with his own fears about the Grandfather, but if she asked him where all that stuff about… _them_ … came from…  
  
 _No_.  
  
The Doctor didn't know about that… on _any_ level.  
  
OK, maybe some subconscious part of him suspected something about how much time she'd spent with him ever since he basically moved into Leadworth for her, but she'd kept him tied down long enough 'training' her; asking him for more just felt so… _selfish_ …  
  
"Yes?" the Doctor asked, looking curiously at her; Amy hadn't even realised she'd stopped talking until he broke her train of thought.  
  
"Nothing," she said, shrugging and giving him a hopeful smile, praying he wouldn't press the issue. "So, now that's over with, maybe we could K9 back up and running?"  
  
"Good point," the Doctor said, nodding in agreement as he turned back to his work on the robot dog, leaving Amy to watch him with a hopeful smile.  
  
Even if the Doctor could never see her that way, she was his companion now; that was more than most of the universe would ever have.  
  
No matter what the Dream Lord 'wanted' her to think, she didn't _need_ anything else…


	25. Old Victory, New Nightmare

After the chaos and self-examination caused by the Dream Lord's strange 'confrontation' with them, Amy had been hoping that the next planet they visited would be something that would help them relax, but as she looked out of the TARDIS doors, she found herself disappointed. It wasn't that their new location was that bad as a landing-site, with a sun slightly smaller than Earth's setting over a rocky field interspersed with plants, but the few trees and plants around them seemed to be relatively small compared to some of the more exotic vegetation she'd seen in her travels, and the ground overall seemed to be almost barren, given how few plants there were despite the openness of the area.

"Interesting," the Doctor said, looking around himself with a smile.

"Interesting?" Amy asked, looking back at him in surprise. "How?"

"The plants," the Doctor explained, grinning as he indicated the trees Amy had just been looking at. "Not very big yet, but considering how far we are from Earth, the lengths someone must have gone to in order to plant them here in the first place shouldn't be overlooked…"

He paused for a moment before crouching down to examine the ground, picking up a small pinch of dirt and placing it on his tongue before spitting it out. "Yep, there was definitely _something_ wrong with this soil at some point…"

"'Something wrong with the soil'?" Amy repeated, looking sceptically at the Doctor. "Like what?"

"Hard to say; tang's too faint for me to be specific," the Doctor said apologetically as he stood back up and looked around. "The coordinates for this planet seemed familiar, but this area isn't ringing any bells…"

"Master," a voice said from behind them.

"K9?" the Doctor said, turning around to look at the robot dog in surprise. "You really shouldn't be out there, boy; sorry, but the terrain's a bit unstable-"

"Understood," K9 said, his ears whirring back and forth for a moment before he rose a few centimetres off the ground. "Is this acceptable?"

"Uh… of course," the Doctor said, shaking his head as he smiled in bemusement at his old friend. "When did Romana install that?"

"Shortly after you returned her to Gallifrey," K9 replied. "She stated that she was tired of being required to carry me everywhere."

"I'm sure," the Doctor said, chuckling briefly at the sight.

"Why don't you do that all the time?" Amy asked.

"Hover mode requires slightly more power than regular movement, Mistress," K9 responded. "Low levels of power over rough terrain is acceptable on some occasions, but it is easier to rely on existing methods of self-propulsion to get around."

"I'm sure," the Doctor said, before looking more seriously at the robot dog. "I don't suppose you recognise this place?"

"Negative," K9 confirmed, after quickly rotating in a full circle to better scan his surroundings. "No recollection that this unit or my predecessor has been here before."

"Well, that knocks a few options off the list, anyway," the Doctor noted, shaking his head thoughtfully. "It's still not much, though; I've been to so many places since I started travelling…"

He looked thoughtfully at the fragile trees for a moment, before he shrugged and glanced back at Amy and K9 with a smile. "Anyway, shall we have a stroll and see what we find?"

"Why not?" Amy smiled.

"Affirmative," K9 noted.

With those words, the three set off, the TARDIS locked behind them as they headed out onto the planet. As the Doctor walked, he noted further signs of fragile plantlife around them, arranged in a manner that suggested some form of harvest and crop cultivation was going on here even if it still had a long way to go until it was producing a truly thriving environment. It was as though this planet was still recovering from some past disaster that had done some kind of damage to its whole ecology; everything here seemed to be growing, but even Amy could tell that most of these plants couldn't have been here for long.

"Anything?" she asked, after the three of them had been walking for a few minutes with no sound from the Doctor.

"Maybe…" the Time Lord nodded thoughtfully, his gaze settling on a nearby hill. "It's been a long time whatever way you look at it, but I think… if I'm right, maybe…"

Climbing up the hill, the Doctor's smile broadened as he took in what was on the other side; a small collection of buildings, consisting mainly of metal panels or large domes, around a tall tower with something sticking out the side that looked like a half-finished tower that had been left at a 45-degree angle. The buildings became more basic as they went further out from the main tower, as though they were reinforcing what worked and only set up new habitation when circumstances demanded it, but the general impression was still interesting.

"What is that?" Amy asked, indicating the central tower; everything else she could guess was the result of some kind of recently-established colony that was still finding its way, but that part didn't seem to fit that particular impression..

"An old launch system for a spaceship…" the Doctor began, staring uncertainly at the large central structure for a moment before he grinned in realisation. "Of _course_ ; this is Uxareius!"

"Uxareius?" Amy repeated. "You've been here before?"

"First trip I took in the old girl during my exile to Earth eight lives ago," the Doctor grinned, his smile broadening as he took in the area around him. "The whole colony was struggling to produce any food because there was this ancient doomsday machine thing in an old city that was contaminating the soil, but I managed to blow it up when the Master tried to take it for himself."

"So… good trip?" Amy smiled at the Doctor's enthusiasm at retelling the story.

"One of my best, mainly because the main colony sorted out their primary problem for themselves; all I had to do was keep the Master focused on something else most of the time so he didn't make it worse," the Doctor smiled. "It's all been a long time ago for me, of course, but it looks like it wasn't that long ago for here-"

"Who are you?" a voice said from behind the group. Turning around, the Doctor and Amy found themselves facing two young men in casual clothing carrying guns standing protectively on either side of an older woman in a dark brown dress, with thick brown hair that came down to just below her neck, her face surprisingly smooth despite the hint of lines.

"Mary Ashe!" the Doctor grinned, grabbing the old woman's hand to give it an affectionate shake.

"Do I… know you?" the woman asked, looking at the Doctor in bemusement.

"You met… my grandfather… when he came here some time ago," the Doctor replied, still smiling even as Amy saw the slight falter in his expression that indicated that he was trying to come up with something at the last minute. "Doctor John Smith and his assistant Jo Grant? Back when your father was trying to set this place up? There was all that mess with IMC and the fake Adjudicator?"

"I… remember it, I just… you're his _grandson_?" the woman said, looking at the Doctor in surprise. "I didn't think Doctor Smith was that old…"

"He aged well, and he had my father when he was fairly young; things happen," the Doctor smiled. "He was already very proud of what you'd accomplished here, of course; couldn't stop talking about you when he was reflecting on his old travels."

"I… see," the woman said, her expression still sceptical even if there was a slight smile as she looked at Amy. "And would this be Jo's daughter?"

"What?" the Doctor said, before shaking his head in understanding. "No, no, Amy's just my assistant like Jo was my grandfather's; no relationship between _them_ as far as I know-"

"Governor Ashe," one of the men said, looking at her with a pointed stare, "why are we listening to this man? We're here looking for the kidnappers-"

"Kidnappers?" Amy interjected anxiously.

"Victor," Mary said, looking at the man who'd spoken with a smile, "firstly, I haven't been your 'governor' for almost a decade now, and secondly, even if this man isn't the Doctor's grandson, I don't think that kidnappers would try to give us such an elaborate cover-"

The sound of a scream cut Mary's explanation short as the five humans and robot dog turned to the source of the noise, quickly focusing on a smaller hut on the outskirts of the city below them. The two guards and Mary instantly began to run towards the source of the scream, the Doctor and Amy close behind as K9 followed after them. Focusing on the small hut, Amy found it hard to see anything in the dim lighting- a few doors were lit up, but otherwise this part of the colony seemed like it hadn't gotten around to street lights yet- but she soon glimpsed a small group running from the back of the hut wearing distinctive armour/

"Is that-?" she began.

"MOVE!" the Doctor yelled, cutting off Amy's question as he picked up the pace, his new intensity answering her almost better than anything he could have said. The first two people fleeing from the hut moved off too quickly for anyone to catch them, but a flying leap from the Doctor allowed him to knock the third figure to the ground. As the guards, Mary, and Amy ran up to the Doctor, he had turned the other man over and was keeping him pinned to the ground with both legs on either side of his chest, tearing off the familiar bone-mask that Amy had come to dread.

"Is that… the Faction?" Mary asked, looking at the figure in shock.

"Governor Ashe, the Faction are-" Victor began.

"Very much real and very much a problem, Victor," the Doctor interjected, even as he kept his gaze fixed on the man below him. "Now then, shall we talk?"

"You're too late, Doctor," the man said, his face looking particularly skull-like even without the mask. "You might know we're here, but you'll never find them in time."

The Doctor didn't even have the chance to ask what the man was talking about when he suddenly raised one arm and plunged his clawed gauntlet into his own chest. Amy and Mary barely had time to scream before the man's arm emerged from his chest, holding up his own bloodstained heart before he slumped back to the ground, eyes staring vacantly as his heart slipped from his fingers.

"Oh God…" Amy said, holding her hand to her mouth before she turned to throw up away from the body.

"Wh… what…?" Mary said, shaking her head as she looked at the Doctor, lost for anything else to say in the face of what had just happened. "That… did he just…?"

"Kill himself?" the Doctor finished, nodding grimly as he stood up from the body. "Yes, but why? The Faction might be a death cult as much as everything else these days, but they don't commit suicide on impulse; there's something here they don't want to risk anyone talking about…"

As Amy knelt on the ground, taking deep breaths to try and calm herself after emptying her stomach, she knew that she and the Doctor were committed to staying here until they'd found out just what the Faction were up to.

She just prayed that she wouldn't have to see something like _that_ again any time soon…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To those who don't watch the classic series, the Third Doctor previously visited Uxareius in "Colony in Space". Mary Ashe was portrayed by Helen Worth, who is also known for her role as Gail McIntyre in _Coronation Street_ , so I based my description of the older Mary on some images I found of Helen as Gail in the present; just look her up and you'll get a good image.
> 
> Hope you enjoy this upcoming original plot; let's just say that Uxareius and the Faction aren't the only familiar faces the Doctor will find in this crisis…


	26. The Secrets of Uxaerius

"So this has been happening for the last few days?" the Doctor asked, looking urgently at Mary as he stood on the other side of her desk; Amy was currently talking with their soldiers in the cafeteria while K9 rested in a corner to recharge.

"Precisely," the older woman confirmed, sitting grimly in her office. "The colony's expanded since your grandfather was here, but it's not grown to such an extent that we weren't all aware the first time a child was abducted. The first one took place a few days ago, and they've taken place each day since, we've already lost four children before tonight's abduction, and your earlier involvement marks the first time we've even seen who's responsible for it."

"And… nobody still thinks that we might be responsible, right?" the Doctor asked, wanting to get that issue out of the way as soon as possible.

"I had my doubts, but considering what those kidnappers looked like, I don't think anyone would attack us like that _and_ try and get us to trust them by posing as the grandson of someone who dropped in for a visit a few years ago," Mary said.

"True," the Doctor smiled, suddenly grateful that he hadn't done much on his last visit; it might be easier to convince everyone that he was being honest about his identity when he didn't have a particular past reputation to 'trade' on like he had back on Peladon. "On the topic of my grandfather's visit, I was wondering… why's this colony built with such a focus on your old launch port? From what… my grandfather told me… and I'm sorry if this is a difficult topic… but didn't your father die there?"

"He did," Mary said, nodding solemnly at the Doctor's question before she smiled at him. "And that's why we moved everything here; to ensure that we always remembered the sacrifice he made to help us save our colony."

"I'm sure he'd approve," the Doctor smiled in understanding before looking curiously at him. "So, are you the governor now, or not?"

"I was for a good few years after we were able to start growing crops, but I stood down about five years ago as I felt that I was getting too old for the job," Mary explained, with a self-deprecating smile. "I'm still treated as 'the' governor by some of the older residents who grew up with me in charge, but I'm more of an advisor to the current colony leader; I don't want to give the impression we're establishing some kind of autocracy here."

"Fair enough," the Doctor smiled in approval, before he looked more seriously at the young woman. "In any case, now that I'm here, if those kidnappings are the kind of long-term problem you've said, I'm here to help if a new pair of eyes would help."

Looking at the Doctor in silence for a few moments, Mary smiled in resolution.

"Well," she said at last, "your grandfather helped us learn more about the natives and helped us expose IMC's plans to drive us off; I suppose it's only fair to give you a chance to help us tackle this case."

"Thank you," the Doctor smiled, before looking at her with new resolution. "So, first things first, what do you have on these disappearances so far?"

"They started a few days ago, this is the fourth child missing, and tonight was the first time we saw who was responsible for them," Mary said grimly. "Aside from the obvious fact that our abductors are clearly _extremely_ twisted, based on their clothing and… what that man did to himself… that's all we know."

"I see," the Doctor said, looking thoughtful for a moment before he continued. "And you've never worked out where they're taking the children?"

"We found out about the first three after the fact, and our men lost track of the fourth child after the abductors got over that hill," Mary said grimly. "We knew that, whoever these people were, they were targeting people on the outskirts of the colony, but ordering people to retreat to the central buildings is only so effective when we're still working to provide enough resources to sustain ourselves."

"I thought your crop problems were over when… my grandfather left?" the Doctor asked; it had been a while since his visit here, but he recalled being sure that the destruction of the doomsday machine would have allowed the ecology of the planet to start to heal.

"The crops are doing better than they were when we began, but that doesn't mean it's always easy," Mary explained. "Our slow start means that we lost several potential resources early on, and after that it still took time for the soil to recover from… whatever was wrong with it early on."

"I see," the Doctor nodded. "So you can't ask anyone to go too far into the city for safety when they still need to work on their own crops for the future?"

"Exactly," Mary nodded. "Each house is mostly self-sustaining to provide the main essentials of daily life, but each area of the colony develops their own specialities so that we can 'trade' with each other."

"Talking of soil and trade, how's things with… those natives my grandfather mentioned?" the Doctor asked. "I haven't seen them around…"

"Actually, they've moved beyond just being our 'assistants' these days," Mary smiled. "They still can't talk, but they've learned to write well enough, so a few of them have taken to living on the outskirts as well as taking a more active role in assisting us in finding suitable areas to grow more crops and expand our territory without interfering with their own way of life."

"Good to hear; I always wondered what happened to them… from my grandfather's stories, you know," the Doctor shrugged, just as another thought occurred to him. "By the way, what happened to that Winton fellow my grandfather mentioned; considering the role in played in driving off IMC, I always assumed that he'd be the leader of this place after your father's death?"

"David… did a good job saving us from IMC, but after the fight was over he stood down because he felt that he wasn't going to be that good and leading us in peace," Mary explained. "He and Caldwell take responsibility for our off-planet exports these days."

"Off-planet exports?"

"We recognise that Earth needs the minerals we have here for more than just maintaining the status quo, but we equally don't want this planet to just be another mining world," Mary explained firmly. "Once they got married, Winton and Caldwell took responsibility for supervising limited mining expeditions down to other parts of the planet so that we can export them offworld for additional resources without compromising areas that we might need ourselves."

"Good plan," the Doctor smiled, surprised at the human twist even as he approved of their new role. "They're married? My grandfather never saw _that_ coming… but then again, he often missed that sort of thing."

"It was a surprise to them as well," Mary smiled, before her expression became grimmer. "Their grandson was one of the first children taken."

"Their grandson?" the Doctor repeated curiously; he was fairly sure this was too early in history for _that_ genetic 'tweak'.

"They adopted a baby girl after her mother died giving birth and her father was… one of the casualties in our fight with IMC," Mary explained, looking sadly down at her desk for a moment before she shrugged and smiled at the Doctor. "Anyway, you know what we know; do you have anything you'd like to look at first?"

"A few ideas spring to mind," the Doctor said, nodding thoughtfully at Mary before he smiled. "I'll just go and get Amy and we can check something out; I'll let you know if we find anything."

"You're sure you don't want any-?"

"I think a stealth approach would be better than a show of force when we have hostages to consider as well, don't you?" the Doctor said, his tone grim as he looked at the former governor.

Mary had struck him as a reasonable woman so far, but when dealing with the Faction taking such large-scale action, he had to be sure that every precaution was taken to stop them realising that he was on to them until it was too late…

* * *

The thing that Amy liked best about travelling in time was that there was never a 'favourite' choice of destination because everything was fascinating. Seeing the past unfold and watching as historical figures made their mark was incredible, but it was equally fascinating to witness the future unfold and encounter alien races. Right now, the colony itself was simple, but it was still engaging to see how the human race had expanded outwards from an overcrowded homeworld to explore new lives on fresh worlds.  
  
While the Doctor had been talking with the apparently former governor, Amy had been left in an empty room in the 'town hall' with a couple of guards and K9, but it had soon been clear that they were just there for her protection rather than to keep her confined. She hadn't been able to find much about the Doctor's original visit to this planet as she wasn't sure how much she could ask without appearing suspiciously ignorant, but K9 had been connected up to a local power junction to recharge his cells, and had even spent that time giving Amy some quick pointers on how to temporarily boost his nose-laser. It came at the price of diverting some power from his sensors, but the Doctor had no objections to the plan when he returned to collect them, noting that he actually had a few ideas about where the Faction might be already.  
  
"So…" Amy asked, after the three TARDIS travellers had spent a few minutes walking away from the colony, Amy awkwardly carrying a gun one of the guards had insisted she take despite the Doctor's protests about the use of weapons, "where are we going?"  
  
"They never mentioned the ruined city."  
  
"And?" Amy asked, after a few moments of silent walking had gone by without the Doctor elaborating on that statement.  
  
"The last time I was on this planet, I was involved in the destruction of a doomsday weapon hidden in an ancient city built by the native population centuries ago," the Doctor explained. "Even if it was destroyed as a structure, enough of it should have been left behind for someone to make use of it, and it would be natural for the colonists to at least look there, but Mary Ashe didn't even mention that it had been dismissed as a possibility."  
  
"Maybe they didn't think of it?" Amy asked.  
  
"I made it clear that I found the city interesting last time I was here; they should have at least mentioned the city that my 'grandfather' was so keen on," the Doctor said firmly. "Whatever's going on here, I wouldn't be surprised to find the Faction have set up shop in the city; I'm guessing that the Faction must be using a perception filter to stop anyone even consciously registering that the city ruin's might be a potential base."  
  
"That's possible?" Amy asked, as they rounded a corner to reveal an open cave in a high cliff.  
  
"It's possible," the Doctor said, looking grimly at the cave in front of them before turning back to the robot dog. "K9, stay out here; if there's trouble, send a sonic burst on the frequency we discussed."  
  
"Sonic burst?" Amy repeated uncertainly.  
  
"I'll detect it on this," the Doctor said, tapping an earpiece in his left ear. "We have to focus on staying discreet for the moment; K9 can let us know if anyone comes into the cavern while we're searching, and I can use this for K9 to lead us out later."  
  
"Affirmative," K9 said, moving over to take up position behind a nearby rock, where nobody could see him unless they were actively looking for the robot dog.  
  
"Right," the Doctor said, looking at Amy with a firm stare. "Pond, follow me and stay alert; it's been a while since I was here even before they blew it up, but I have a fairly clear idea where we're going."  
  
Nodding in understanding, Amy fell into step behind the Time Lord, the Doctor carefully making his way through the strangely-illuminated stone passage. There were a few fallen rocks blocking some of the paths the Doctor tried to follow, and more than once the Doctor ended up doubling back as though he'd just realised that he'd made a mistake, but apart from a few distant footfalls, they made fairly good progress through the ruined city, hiding in a few of the side-caverns when someone or something came particularly close to their location. Amy's careful glances were enough to confirm that the passers-by were Faction members, with their distinctive bone-like armour, but fortunately the same armour also hindered their peripheral vision, preventing them ever seeing her or the Doctor.  
  
Just as Amy was starting to wonder what the Doctor expected to find here, he pressed his hand against a particular rock and a part of the wall swung open, revealing a large cavern with various paintings covering the walls. Amy was about to move over to take a closer look at them when she realised that four children were lying around the room, evidently the kids who had been abducted from the colony, each one strapped to what Amy could only think of as a high-tech dentist chair, with elaborate bone-styled helmets on their heads and various cables running off the chairs. At first, Amy wasn't sure if she should be shocked or disturbed at what they'd found, but shocked quickly became the main emotion when she realised that the various cables all led to the wall at the other end of the room, which displayed a large crack identical to the one that had been on her bedroom wall and in the heart of the _Byzantium_ before the Angels were dropped into it.  
  
"A crack?" she said, looking at the Doctor in shock. "Did you know that was going to be here?"  
  
"No…" the Doctor said, shaking his head before he looked upwards and his eyes widened in shock. "Oh my God…!"  
  
Looking up, Amy wasn't sure what had inspired that degree of shock. The sight of a blonde woman in military green trousers and a tight T-shirt chained to a similar chair set-up as the four children raised some questions, particularly why it was on the ceiling rather than the floor when it was still linked to the crack, but it didn't deserve the sheer horror on the Doctor's face at the sight of her.  
  
"What is it?" Amy asked, looking at her friend in surprise. "Do you know her?"  
  
"Oh, I know her," the Doctor said, looking back at Amy with grim shock. "She's my daughter."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I give you the final member of my TARDIS crew; the Doctor's daughter, known as 'Jenny' in the original timeline (Although she'll have a new name in this story, considering that Donna was the one who named her in canon but here the Doctor was travelling alone when he got to Messaline and hence never got around to naming her before her 'death').


	27. The Daughter, the Cult, and the Crack

" _Daughter_?" Amy repeated, looking at the Doctor in shock.

She was ashamed to realise that her initial reaction was a selfish sense of jealousy; even if she was glad that the Doctor wasn't the last of his kind any more, if this woman was his _daughter_ , that meant he'd been with… _someone else_ … someone he'd always remember when he looked at her…

"Yes," the Doctor said, looking at the young woman above him with a tentative smile. "I thought she died on Messaline… I can't believe I didn't think of it…"

"We can… ask her about that later," Amy said, resolving to focus on the positives of the situation; her own jealousy didn't matter if the Doctor was no longer the last of his kind who wasn't his psychopathic maybe-self, particularly not when the survivor was one of his family. "So… who was her mother?"

"Technically, me," the Doctor said.

Amy blinked.

"…What?" she said uncertainly, her mind suddenly flashing to bizarre thoughts of the Doctor doing that 'regenerating' thing he'd told her about to turn into a woman and have sex with himself at some point in his past-

"She was created by a progenation machine on the planet Messaline, as part of a warped conflict between the human colonists and another group of aliens known as the Hath," the Doctor explained. "Complete reproduction from a single cell, with the result that one parent is both mother _and_ father; she's not a clone, but 'daughter' is essentially the easiest term to define what she is to me."

"Oh," Amy said, looking at the girl in a moment of uncertain thought before she looked back at her friend. "So what happened?"

"She died," the Doctor said, looking up at the girl lying above him with a suddenly uncomfortable expression. "I was trying not to get attached because all she knew was the war the machine had created her to fight, then I ended up travelling with her to find this ancient power source from the colony's legends after we were stuck in a cell when the general didn't trust her coming from 'pacifist stock' and I needed her help getting out, she expressed an interest in travelling with me…"

"And she didn't make it?" Amy finished for him, the Time Lord lost in thought and sorrow as he stared up at the woman hanging above them.

"She was shot by the general just as we'd found the power source from the legends," the Doctor said solemnly. "It would terraform the entire world into a paradise where both humans and Hath could be at peace… and he shot at me because he couldn't cope with the end of the conflict he'd been fighting as long as he could remember."

"And she took it for you?"

"I never even got around to giving her a name," the Doctor said, his voice almost tearful as he looked at the still form lying above them. "I spent so long trying to distance myself from her… acted as though she was just a pale reflection of what they'd been, even when she made it clear that she was more than the soldier they'd created her to be… and by the time she'd proven that she was like me after all, it just hurt too much…"

Lost for anything to say to this revelation, Amy stepped forward to give the Doctor's shoulder a reassuring squeeze, looking up at the woman above them with a new sense of appreciation.

The Doctor's daughter… with no actual 'mother' that he'd be reminded of every time he looked at her… a reminder of the home he'd lost that wasn't tainted by the memories of what he'd been tricked into doing…

"How do we get her down?"

"Pardon?" the Doctor asked, looking at her in surprise, the question breaking his bleak train of thought.

"Well, however she got here, we can't exactly leave her," Amy smiled encouragingly. "Even if she's not your daughter, she's probably not a willing part of whatever the Faction are doing here, so let's get her down, get everyone else out, find out what the Faction are doing here, make sure that they can't do it again, and then get her somewhere safe."

"That… sounds good to me," the Doctor grinned, looking up at his daughter for a moment before he raised his sonic screwdriver to point it at the bone-style bonds holding her arms and legs. As each strap released, Amy moved over to stand underneath the other woman, catching the woman's legs as her left arm and legs were freed from their bonds, giving the Doctor time to get over and catch her upper body as he undid the last strap. The bone-like helmet on her head raised some questions, but Amy had faith that the Doctor could get that off safely now that his daughter was out of immediate danger-

"Very smart," a voice said from behind them, the Doctor and Amy spinning around to find three men glaring at them, all dressed in the traditional bone-armour of the Faction. One man was wearing a long black robe with what looked like bloodstains while the other two were clearly the other kidnappers the two of them had witnessed during last night's abduction, but all three of them were equally intimidating as far as Amy was concerned.

"Ah, there you are," the Doctor said, adjusting his grip on the girl in his arms as he glared at the three men. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me what the _point_ of all this is?"

"Come now, Doctor," the man in the cape smiled as he indicated the crack, "you of all people should know what happens when-"

"That would take _years_ , and they've only been here for- oh," the Doctor said, looking up at the ceiling once again as understanding dawned. "That's what she's here for, correct?"

"What?" Amy asked, looking between the Doctor and the man in bone in confusion.

"Proximity to a crack like that can have… side-effects after prolonged exposure," the Doctor explained, looking slightly ashamed as he looked at Amy. "It's not actually dangerous, but it would mean that those exposed to it would be aware on some level if history was altered in their proximity; they'd miss some of the personal details, but they'd know enough to know that the reality they're in isn't what it should be."

"And you'd _want_ that?" Amy looked incredulously at the Faction agent. "I thought your lot just liked screwing around with Time-!"

"Haven't you heard of canaries?"

"Oh God," Amy said, immediately latching on to the man's meaning as she remembered some of her old history lessons. "You're using them to see if timelines are _safe_?"

"Some alternate timelines have a… nasty habit of falling apart once someone identifies the chinks compared to the original course of events," the Cousin shrugged. "Creating agents who can identify when timelines are dangerously flawed allows us to be sure when we're pushing reality beyond a certain point; we can't exactly undo the damage when a whole segment of the Web has collapsed, after all."

"No, you'd prefer to wait until you have the tools to keep the foundation stable…" the Doctor muttered darkly, before looking at the Cousin with new curiosity. "I understand the plan, but why come all the way to Uxaerius for that? It's out of the way, but there have to be more remote locations…"

"Other options were considered, but this had the advantage of having a colony of potential test subjects available already, to say nothing of what used to be here."

"The Doomsday Machine?" the Doctor asked, curious despite himself. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Oh, Doctor," the Cousin chuckled, "didn't you ever stop to think about what powered such an incredible weapon?"

"A crack in time?" Amy asked, looking back at the wall in shock as the lack of contradiction spoke for itself. "They've been around that long?"

"Not all cracks come from the same source, Pond," the Doctor noted, even as he continued to stare at the three Faction members before them. "Quite frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if this particular crack only became this pronounced relatively recently; whatever caused these cracks couldn't have created the original rift this machine used, and it wouldn't need to be that much of a rift for a species who knew what they were working with…"

"Hold on; these cracks couldn't have powered that machine?" Amy asked, feeling increasingly confused. "But… I mean, they're cracks in _time_ -"

"Time is a very complex thing, Pond; even when Gallifrey's existence was meant to create a linear timeline that I could 'relate' to even when I was in the TARDIS, I often ended up visiting or being contacted by its past or future from my… fifth body onwards, I'd say," the Doctor said. "Quite frankly, with the Faction active I try not to think about how the wider temporal events are perceived by the rest of the universe; Time stopped being completely linear for me _before_ that mess on Dust, so there's no way to be sure when the cracks appeared, but I'd be inclined to think the one in your room wasn't there for long before I met you."

"Uh… right," Amy nodded. "I… _think_ I follow that…"

"I'll try and go over the details later if you want," the Doctor said, before he shrugged and turned back to the Faction agents. "Anyway, shall I assume that one of the cracks we've been seeing lately just manifested here because the pre-existing rift made reality here a little more fragile?"

"It's like anything, Doctor; break it once, and it becomes a bit easier to do it again," the man in the cloak smiled, before his gaze narrowed on the woman in the Doctor's arms. "Which is where she came in."

"Yes, what _were_ you using her for?" the Doctor asked, tightening his grip on his daughter as he looked at the men. "I can appreciate what you were doing, but considering what she is, I would have thought the Grandfather would demand her for himself…"

"Oh, if she was a full Time Lord, she would have been handed over to him immediately, but it didn't take long to determine that she had no real training in anything," the Cousin shrugged, looking at the young woman with a slightly curious gleam behind his mask. "She never actually told us who she was after we confirmed that she didn't know anything about the finer nature of Time beyond some heightened perception of it; was she some new attempt to create soldiers on those Looms of yours?"

"And what makes you think I'd answer that?" the Doctor asked.

"An idle hope, but no harm in making sure," the Cousin said dismissively. "The point is that, even if we couldn't corrupt her to use her knowledge, her natural skills were still potent enough for the Grandfather to use her in this manner; these children would have some very potent skills even on their own, but with the girl's own natural awareness of time to serve as a template, we have some _very_ interesting results…"

"Which are going to stop now," the Doctor said firmly, eyes narrowing as he glared at the three.

"And you think that you can stop us?" one of the soldiers asked with a mocking smile. "In case you didn't notice, we outnumber you-"

"But I do still have a trick or two you won't be expecting," the Doctor said, before he reached over and placed the palm of his hand on his daughter's forehead, closing his eyes as he concentrated.

"What-?" the man in the cloak began, before the blonde girl suddenly sat up sharply and began to lash out at the three Faction agents, moving with such speed and precision that Amy couldn't believe that the other woman still had her eyes closed. As the nearest Faction soldier fell to the ground, the Doctor grabbed the man by the shoulders and hurled him towards the crack before his colleagues could anything, Amy grabbing the second man as the daughter sent him flying to follow the Doctor's example, hoping that tossing people into the crack wouldn't make things worse. Turning back to the Cousin in the cloak, Amy tried not to panic as the daughter fell to the ground with him still standing, but her fears were cut short as the Doctor walked up and grabbed the man by the cloak.

"You tried to attack Uxaerius," he said, glaring coldly at the man in bone armour. "I could almost forgive that as just the typical Faction sickness and the Grandfather's desire to corrupt everything I've touched that won't destroy his history… but when you try to turn my _daughter_ into a weapon for his sick experiments, you crossed a line."

"Your _daughter_?" the Cousin repeated in shock.

"The thing about the Faction," the Doctor continued, "is that you always think you're special because they're the monsters who are subtly conquering the Web of Time, but you're always overlooking something even the Grandfather's forgotten."

"The Grandfather remembers everything-!"

"Except the most important thing," the Doctor said, folding his arms as he stared at the Cousin. "When you're a monster, that's all you are, and that leaves it up to me to play my own role."

He allowed himself a smile as he looked at the Cousin. "I'm the one who stops the monsters… which is why I have _no_ qualms about doing _this_!"

With that, the Doctor turned around to hurl the Cousin into the crack by his cape. As Amy watched, the crack briefly glowed with a greater intensity before it faded away, closing even as they watched it, leaving no trace that it had ever been there.

"What-?" Amy began, before she remembered what the Doctor had told her about the last crack. "The Faction are complicated events in space-time?"

"Bingo, Pond," the Doctor grinned. "After all, modern initiation rites tend to include killing some past relatives to prove your devotion to the ideals of Paradox; if that's not complicated, I don't know what is."

"OK, so that explains why we threw them in…" Amy said, looking thoughtfully at the crack for a moment before another thought occurred to her. "But how did that work? I mean, I'm not complaining, but if it took a whole shipful of Weeping Angels to close the last crack-"

"That one was far bigger because the Angels had essentially been poking at it to drain its power," the Doctor explained. "The Faction are various levels of insane, but they're not stupid enough to tear a crack like this any further than they need to. Since it was quite a bit smaller than the one we stopped on the _Byzantium_ , coupled with the fact that the Faction agents tend to be a bit more complicated than the Angels, these three were sufficiently complex to close a crack that relatively small."

"OK, good to know," Amy smiled in understanding, before looking curiously at the Doctor's daughter, still lying unconscious on the ground. "And… what did she just do?"

"Remember what I told you about her origin?"

"Oh," Amy said, looking at the girl in new understanding. "Since she was _created_ as a soldier…"

"In her current state, it didn't take much to 'prompt' her to revert to her pre-programmed skills and fight on near-automatic," the Doctor said, looking at his daughter with his mouth twisted in a subtle manner that only Amy's long experience with him allowed her to identify as his self-loathing. "She's going to need more time to recover from the strain of what they made her do on top of what I… just did to her, but give her a few days to rest in the TARDIS and she should be fine."

"Good," Amy said, smiling in relief before looking more curiously at the Doctor. "So… what was all that stuff about you understanding why they needed her?"

"My people have a… particular sensitivity to the nature of Time, Pond," the Doctor explained. "Considering the Grandfather's history, he may have some way to pass on some of that knowledge himself, but he wouldn't want to demean himself by simply giving every single agent a 'boost'; aside from the risk of compromising his reputation if he became tired, what's the point in being a god if you can't delegate?"

"Even with something this useful?"

"In my experience, it's easier to get everyone thinking you're a god if you don't step in too much."

"And he'd be drawing on _your_ experience to shape his way of doing things…" Amy nodded in understanding. "So… since she doesn't _know_ anything, they thought that hooking her up to this would make it easier for them to copy what makes her 'immune' to whatever this thing does to history so that they could pass it on to someone else?"

"That's the most straightforward way to think of it, so let's go with that," the Doctor confirmed with a smile, before he looked grimly around the room. "On the bright side, erasing those three should mean we can just pass this whole thing off to the colony as some twisted psychopath who died last night…"

As the Time Lord looked down at the girl in his arms, Amy suddenly wondered if finding this girl was going to be a good thing for the Doctor.

If he hadn't even _named_ his daughter before he thought she was dead, and since he couldn't have 'conceived' her in his current body without Amy knowing, how would this woman react to meeting a complete stranger claiming to be her father

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise to anyone who wanted the Doctor to start talking to his daughter here, but I felt that it would have more weight if I gave it its own chapter while using this one to deal with her captors.


	28. Naming the Daughter

Sitting in the TARDIS medical bay as she stared at its only patient, still wearing her familiar dark green T-shirt and trousers, Amy wished that she knew more about all this equipment. The Doctor had given her a fairly detailed crash course in some of the TARDIS's more straightforward functions, such as how to dematerialise the ship or treat simple wounds, but he'd somehow never gotten around to showing her the more complex systems, as though he was privately hoping they'd never be needed.

She supposed she could understand that- if she ever had to treat him for the effects of long-term exposure to a crack in reality, the situation would definitely be worse than anything she'd experienced so far- but that didn't mean it wasn't frustrating to be looking at the Doctor's _daughter_ and feel so helpless.

Returning the children to the colony had actually been the simplest part of the day's events; with the Faction members now erased, all anyone remembered was children going missing and a fanatic who'd torn his own heart out as part of his insanity. Once the Doctor had found the equipment that the Faction had been using to maintain the perception filter around the city, it hadn't taken long to deactivate it, leaving him with nothing more to do than take the children back to the outskirts of the colony and depart once he'd made sure that the residents had seen them.

Amy wished that they could have spent more time looking around the colony, but even if she wanted to take in more of her future, she appreciated that the Doctor had to think about the bigger picture right now. Staying anywhere for a long time was dangerous in case the Faction showed up, and staying there when they'd just erased members of the Faction from history was practically asking for trouble.

She just hoped that the Doctor was right about the Faction abandoning their Uxarieus project; they might think of themselves as being above something as petty as revenge, but the ones she'd encountered so far certainly seemed small-minded enough for that…

"Any change?" the Doctor asked, breaking her concerned thought as he walked into the medical bay, looking anxiously at his daughter.

"Not that I've seen," Amy said apologetically. She appreciated how hard this was for the Doctor, both in terms of anxiety over his daughter and keeping the TARDIS outside of time for this long, but even if the Doctor loved travelling, he wanted to be sure that his daughter was safe before he did anything else. "How long could this take?"

"No way to be sure," the Doctor said as he sat down beside Amy, reaching over to take his daughter's hand with a small, sad smile. "I've been through worse and woken up sooner, but I was fully trained before I let Gallifrey; she was born for battle and dived straight into the conflict she was made for, and then I never had the time to really teach her anything…"

"She'll recover," Amy said firmly, placing a comforting hand on the Doctor's shoulder. "She's your daughter; you're too naturally stubborn for her _not_ to have picked that up."

As though Amy's words had been a cue, the girl's eyes suddenly popped open and she sat up rapidly from the bed, her gaze instantly fixating on the Doctor as she registered his presence. As she looked between the two, Amy felt a sudden pressure in her ears, as though she was suddenly underwater, but the sensation vanished before it could become painful.

"D… Dad?" the Doctor's daughter said, looking at the Time Lord incredulously. "That's… is that _you_?"

"It's me," the Doctor smiled at her, the genuine grin broader than anything Amy had seen him display before. "I know I look different, but it's your dear old Dad."

"H… how?" the daughter asked, looking uncertainly at him as she slowly moved to the edge of the bed, her limbs unsteady as she hauled herself into a sitting position.

"It's a… thing we can do," the Doctor explained, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. "When we're faced with imminent death, Time Lords can… change our bodies to save our lives. I thought you were too young to do it, which is why I thought you were… well, dead… after what happened, but your body must have considered your birth as a regeneration of its own and let you heal after I left."

"That helps?" Amy asked.

"We can deal with some serious injuries as though we're still regenerating if they're inflicted in the first fifteen hours of a new body, Pond; when she didn't regenerate immediately, I assumed that… she was just too young to do that properly," the Doctor explained, before he turned back to his daughter with a new urgency in his expression. "I swear to you, if I'd had _any_ idea that you were still alive…"

"I know, dad," the girl said, grinning warmly at the Doctor before she looked at him in confusion. "But… how did you find me, who were those men in… skeletons… and who is she?"

"Oh, I'm Amelia Pond," Amy smiled as the blonde pointed at her in confusion. "I'm… well, I travel with your dad."

"Really?" the girl looked at her in surprise.

"Think of her as… a student," the Doctor said. "She's…been a very good friend to me since we met."

"Oh," his daughter said, looking at Amy with an uncertain expression.

"Just a friend," Amy said reassuringly. "Believe me, I'm not… his attempt to replace _you_ or anything like that."

"As for who the men in skeletons were," the Doctor continued, "they were Faction Paradox, enemies of mine who seek to cause paradox and chaos throughout history; they were attempting to use you as part of a more complex plan to create a group of agents who would be… sensitive to temporal anomalies."

"Oh," his daughter said. "That… sounds complicated."

"And obviously unpleasant," the Doctor confirmed, looking solemnly at his child. "Still, at least they didn't know who you were."

"They didn't?" Amy looked at the Doctor in surprise. "They were using her for-!"

"You heard that Cousin, Pond; they knew what she was, not _who_ she was," the Doctor clarified. "If they knew that she was my daughter, the Grandfather would be here in person to do everything he could to corrupt her into his personal protégé; as it is, she was useful to them as a surviving Time Lord, but they would have had no reason to think that she was anything else."

"Not a nice man, then?" the Doctor's daughter asked with a slight smile.

"Not really," the Doctor replied. "Let's just say he doesn't like me and take it from there; you just lucked out in that he hasn't seen me in the body I had when you were born and didn't bother looking for a name for your father after he'd identified you."

"He didn't even look?" Amy asked in surprise.

"Advantage of his arrogance and certainty that he knows everything about me, Pond," the Doctor explained with a grim smile. "He'd find it easier to imagine that there was another Time Lord out there than that I'd have a daughter and leave her out there."

"But… you _did_ leave me…" the other woman said, looking at the Doctor with new uncertainty.

"Because I thought you were dead," the Doctor said, his expression becoming more solemn as he reached out to take his daughter's hand. "If I'd had any idea about what had really happened to you, I would _never_ have left you behind; I swear it."

For a moment, the Doctor and his daughter stared silently at each other, hands clasped together as they took in the moment, before the Doctor sat back with a smile.

"So," he said with a nonchalant grin, "now that you're here, the most obvious question now is what we call you?"

"Don't you have any ideas?" the girl asked.

"To be blunt, Time Lord names are… _very_ complicated," the Doctor smiled. "Most of them only had meaning on Gallifrey, and since you're not going to be there, it would probably be better if you had a name that's more relatable to the society you'll be in."

"So… you want to give me a human name?" the girl asked.

"If I can think of one," the Doctor said with a shrug. "Keep in mind, you're talking to the man who's used 'John Smith' as an alias for centuries; I freely admit that I don't have much imagination when it comes to giving people names…"

"Melody?"

"Melody?" the Doctor and his daughter repeated, looking at Amy in surprise.

"I just… like it," Amy said, briefly wondering why she liked it before shaking the thought off. "Is there a problem?"

"The name's fine, it's just that we'd probably end up calling her 'Mel' for short, and, well…" the Doctor said, trailing off awkwardly.

"Oh," Amy said, suddenly remembering some of the Doctor's stories about the complicated time he'd had in his seventh incarnation when he had been 'assigned' the role of Time's Champion to escape a dark future. Now that Amy thought about it, one of the things he was still ashamed of was how that incarnation had telepathically influence his predecessor's companion Melanie Bush into leaving him so that he could do what had to be done without her morality 'holding him back'. "Yeah, that… might be awkward."

"What?" the young woman asked.

"Just… bad experience in my past; I'll tell you about it later," the Doctor said, looking apologetically at his daughter. "Now then… any other ideas?"

"Selene?"

"Where did that one come from?"

"After the heroine from the _Underworld_ movies," Amy explained, suddenly slightly awkward about her choice. "I mean, the reasons for it are different, but they're both great at fighting, they both never had a real childhood because of the war their people started, and… uh, actually, forget it; doesn't work."

"Why not?" the Doctor's daughter asked.

"It just… doesn't," Amy said; she wished that she'd remembered the Doctor's complicated history with vampires before bringing the name up, but the best she could do was deflect it before any more awkward questions came up…

" _Natalie_!" she grinned as another option came to her.

"Natalie?" the Doctor's daughter repeated, her tone thoughtful as she looked at Amy.

"After Natalie McDonald."

"Friend of yours?" the Doctor asked.

"She was a fan of _Harry Potter_ ," Amy explained, looking at the Doctor with a slightly sad smile at the story she was about to tell. "I read about her online; she was a fan of the series when it started, and she'd read up to around _Prisoner of Azkaban_ , but she was dying of leukaemia and knew she wouldn't live to read the end, so she wrote to J.K. and asked her what was going to happen to everyone."

"And it didn't work out?" the Doctor asked, the genuine sorrow in his eyes once again reminding Amy why she lo- _admired_ the Doctor so much; he had lost his entire planet, and he still felt sad hearing about the death of a little girl he'd never met.

"Apparently the letter arrived while J.K. was on holiday and her response got to the McDonalds after Natalie had passed away," Amy confirmed sadly. "J.K. struck up a friendship with Natalie's mother, and named a first-year Gryffindor in _Goblet of Fire_ after her as a tribute, but still… I really felt for that story…"

"I like it," the Doctor's daughter said, looking between Amy and the Doctor with a sad little smile. "The name, I mean; I like Natalie."

"I… like it too," the Doctor said, nodding in approval at Amy before he looked at his daughter. "So… Natalie… a few years back and a lifetime ago, I… well, I know I didn't really get around to _saying_ it back then, but now that you're here… well…"

"Can I come with you?" the newly-named Natalie asked, looking at him with an eager grin. "Really?"

"Well, he wouldn't offer if he didn't want you here, and I know that I wouldn't mind some more female company," Amy noted with a smile. "If you want to be here, feel free to stay."

" _Yes_!" Natalie grinned, moving from the Doctor to give Amy another hug. "Thank you thank you thank you!"

"You're… welcome," Amy said, smiling at the girl's obvious enthusiasm, before she pulled back to look at her more seriously. "Although, if you're going to go by a human first name, what do we do about a last name?"

"What?" Natalie said, looking at Amy curiously.

"Well, your dad gets away with a title, but it couldn't hurt for you to have a last name for just… most of the time," Amy said, shrugging slightly. "Like he said, he uses 'Smith' when he has to, but-"

"Kreiner."

"Kreiner?" Natalie repeated, turning to look at her father. "I thought you said you didn't have much imagination for names?"

"I don't," the Doctor said, his tone solemn as he looked at her. "It's the man who saved my life when I'd done everything wrong in working with him."

Amy knew what he meant by that. He'd told her enough about his history with Fitz for her to be sure that he'd done everything he could in a situation that had just become very complicated very quickly, but so long as he respected Fitz's decision, this wasn't the time for Amy to get into another argument with the Doctor about whether he was worthy of Fitz and Compassion's sacrifice.

"Oh," Natalie said, looking thoughtfully at the Doctor before she spoke again. "He was a good man?"

"The best," the Doctor nodded.

"Then I'd be proud to take his name," the young girl said, smiling in understanding at the Doctor. "Natalie Kreiner… I like the sound of that."

"Me too," the Doctor said, smiling at her as he took her hand. "Natalie Kreiner… welcome aboard."

Looking at the young woman who'd just joined her and the Doctor, Amy couldn't help but smile at the thought of what was coming after this.

The Doctor had lost his planet, but he'd regained his daughter; it was such a small reward for his heroism, but she knew without being told that it was more than he would ever believe he had the right to.

The only thing troubling Amy right now, as she looked at the young blonde enthusiastically embracing her father who looked like he was just about her age, was if she should consider this new addition to the TARDIS a kind of sister, or if she was something else altogether…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the stargate time traveller for suggesting the new name for the Doctor's daughter; I had my own idea, but once his suggestion was brought up, it just _felt_ right, both for the reasons Amy reveals here and my own personal fondness for it


	29. The Shaking Earth

"Ah!" the Doctor said, walking over to the TARDIS doors as the ship finished materialising. "Behold… _Rio_!"

His small faltered as he realised that they were in a small cemetery, and judging by the grass and the cool air they were very far from his intended destination by any stretch of the imagination.

"This… isn't what I expected," Natalie noted, as she stepped out of the TARDIS behind him.

"Because it isn't the right place," Amy smiled as she joined the two Gallifreyians. "One of the things you should know about your dad, Natalie; he's great at steering this thing when we _need_ to go somewhere, but he always seems to have trouble when he just _wants_ to go somewhere."

"Not _always_ ," the Doctor said defensively.

"Affirmative," K9 put in as he rolled up behind them. "Assessment of Doctor-Master's past piloting experience has determined that approximately 23.7% of journeys to a specific destination are successful without the element of threat to ensure focus."

"Element of threat?"

"The Doctor-Master has been able to achieve precise piloting when circumstances urgently demand that he travel to a specific location to avert danger, but has been less fortunate when simply attempting travel for leisure purposes-"

"You do remember that I was using the Randomiser for most of our time together after Romana and I found the Key?" the Doctor noted.

"Assessment was based on access to TARDIS databanks rather than personal experience."

"Randomiser?" Natalie asked.

"An old component that randomised the TARDIS's destination so that I had no direct control over where we were going; I used it for a while when I first travelled with K9 to make sure an old enemy couldn't find me," the Doctor said, clearly grateful for something else to talk about as he walked away from the blue box. "I've managed to set up a new system that just randomises the coordinates when I want to be surprised most of the time without needing the Randomiser as a permanent component, but…"

His voice trailed off as he looked down at his feet, making a couple of short hops on the spot before he spoke again. "The ground feels weird."

"Look, I'm sorry about bringing up your piloting skills, but if you want your daughter to get an honest impression of you-"

"Blue grass," the Doctor interjected, crouching down beside a grave to examine the flora in question before glancing around the area, taking in the date on a nearby stone in particular. "Patches of it all around the graveyard… so, Earth, 2020-ish, over ten years in your future, not Rio, but not a bad overshot."

"Right…" Amy said, looking at the Doctor for a moment before she shrugged and decided not to press the issue; it wouldn't do to give Natalie too bad an impression of her father's driving.

"And look at that!" the Doctor said, grinning as he pointed at what looked to Amy like a large yellow tower with metal legs near some kind of old farm. "A big mining thing! Oh, I love a big mining thing. See, way better than Rio! Rio doesn't have a big mining thing."

"Big mining thing?" Natalie asked, looking at the large tower in surprise. "Is that what it's called?"

"It's just something he does when he doesn't know the technical terms straight away; don't worry about it," Amy said briefly before looking at the Doctor. "You're going to suggest we take a look, aren't you?"

"Brilliant deduction, Pond; let's go!" the Doctor smiled, hurrying down the graveyard towards a gate and a small path, leaving Amy to smile at Natalie before the two women hurried after the Doctor, K9 rolling after them as fast as the uneven ground would allow.

The route from the graveyard to the drilling thing was relatively straightforward, but Amy was surprised to see the Doctor occasionally pause to jump up and down on the ground, as though he was testing a trampoline, before continuing on, giving the others time to catch up despite his head-start and the women waiting at the graveyard entrance for K9 to catch up before he reached smoother ground. Despite the Doctor's brief oddities, the group soon reached their destination, the Doctor using the sonic screwdriver to unlock the gate despite the sign on the door.

"Should we be… doing that?" Natalie asked, looking anxiously at the sign.

"Unauthorised entry only counts for the average person, Natalie," the Doctor smiled at his daughter. "There are times when obeying the rules is a good thing and a time when they're just guidelines, and if we've ended up in this area, I like to think there's a reason for it that we're most likely to find here."

"And that isn't just his ego talking; we've actually got a good amount of evidence that we end up where we're needed," Amy noted with a brief smile at Natalie before she walked through the gate. "Let's get moving."

Once they were inside the gate, it didn't take long to find a door that looked like it led into the main part of the 'mining thing', the two Gallifreyians, one human and robot dog walked along the passage, the Doctor occasionally pausing to test the ground again with a few brief jumps.

"What are you actually looking for?" Natalie asked curiously, after the Doctor had repeated this action three times and they had walked through a room with some kind of large tank in it.

"Still working that out myself," the Doctor said uncertainly. "All I'm sure of is that the ground doesn't feel like it should… and this isn't what the ground should feel like in this era, so that's not it."

"You… feel the ground?" Natalie said, looking at her father in surprise before looking down at her own feet. "I don't feel anything…"

"Hey, it's not like you've ever _been_ to Earth before; nobody expects you to be able to feel something's wrong on your first visit to a new planet," Amy smiled reassuringly at her new companion.

"Ah!" the Doctor said, holding up a hand as he heard a whirring sound. "Hear that, drill in start-up mode. Afterwaves of a recent seismological shift and blue grass."

"OK, so-" Amy began, as the Doctor picked up a fragment of grass from the ground and put it in his mouth. "OK, have you always been this disgusting?"

"No, that's recent," the Doctor said, before continuing along the last corridor until they reached a large room that reminded Amy of a garage, with various large components lying around that put Amy in mind of a car engine. "Ah, hello!"

"Who are you?" an Indian woman in dark clothes asked, looking up from a bench to stare at the four new arrivals. "What're you doing here? And what're you wearing?"

"We were dressed for Rio," Amy said defensively, only just noting that it was actually a little too cold for her chosen skirt; she was suddenly absurdly grateful that Natalie had just chosen casual trousers and a sleeveless top.

"Ministry of Drills, Earth and Science!" the Doctor said, pulling out the psychic paper briefly. "New Ministry, quite big, just merged, lot of responsibility on our shoulders, don't like to talk about it. What're you doing?"

"None of your business," the woman said firmly.

"Where are you getting these readings from?" the Doctor asked, indicating the screen the woman had just been studying with no sign that he'd heard the last statement.

"Under the soil," the woman confirmed as she picked up something that reminded Amy of a bicycle pump from a hole in the stone ground, clearly lost for anything else to do in response to the Doctor's questions.

"The drill's up and running again…" another voice said, Amy and Natalie turning to see a slightly overweight man in red enter the room. "What's going on? Who are these people… and what is that?"

"Doctor John Smith, and this my assistant Amy Pond, my… niece… Natalie Kriener, and K9, a… personal project of mine," the Doctor said, briefly indicating his companions as he crouched down to look at the hole. "Why is this in the middle of your drilling room?"

"We don't know; it just appeared overnight," the woman said, Amy joining the Doctor in examining the hole as Natalie studied the small truck in a corner of the room.

"Good," the Doctor said, standing up sharply. "Right, you all need to get out of here very fast."

"Why?" the woman asked, as the Doctor walked over to the monitor.

"What's your name?" the Doctor looked over at the woman.

"Nasreen Chaudhry."

"Look at the screens, Nasreen," the Doctor explained. "Your readings; it's moving."

"Hey, that's specialised equipment!" the man said, walking up to look impatiently at the Doctor. "Get away from-"

"Trust me," Natalie suddenly stepped in front of the man, "my… uncle… can understand _anything_ this thing has to tell us."

"And right now something down there is shifting when it shouldn't be…" the Doctor said, half-acknowledging Natalie's comment as he studied the screen, before turning to look at Amy as she stood beside the hole. "Pond?"

"Doctor?" Amy said, looking anxiously into the gap in the ground. "I take it steam coming from this isn't a good sign?"

"I doubt it," the Doctor said, turning around and walking over to assess the hole himself

"It's shifting when it shouldn't be shifting…"

"What shouldn't?" Nasreen asked, just as the ground began to shake below them, prompting the Doctor to run back to the drill monitor.

"Couldn't this just be an… earthquake?" Natalie asked.

"One that's only happening under this room?" the Doctor responded, even as he gave his daughter a quick smile of approval. "Nice thought, but not likely."

Natalie didn't have time to ask for other options before more holes started to appear in the ground around them. Moving quickly, she dived to the side and picked up K9, moving over to crouch in the seat of the small truck with the robot dog in her arms, a hole appearing in the ground where the robot dog had been just moments ago.

"The ground's attacking us!" the Doctor yelled, not even the strangers questioning that statement as further holes opened around them. "Everyone-!"

" _Doctor_!"

" _AMY_!" the Doctor yelled, leaping towards the Scottish redhead as a hole opened up underneath her feet, Nasreen following his example as she grabbed the man's hand when his left leg was caught in the same trap.

"Hold on, Pond!" the Doctor yelled, trying not to think about the fact that his first companion in years was literally up to her waist in trouble. "I've got you!"

"Something's pulling me down," Amy said, looking anxiously at where her legs had already vanished into the earth. "Doctor, what's doing this, why is it doing this?"

"Nasreen!" the Doctor called over to the older woman as she hauled the older man out of his hole. "Shut down your drill, _now_!"

"Can you get me out?" Amy asked, as Nasreen and the other man ran for the drill controls.

"Amy, try and stay calm," the Doctor said, his tone firm in a manner that Amy recognised from when he wanted to avoid an awkward question. "If you struggle, it'll make things worse. Keep hold of my hand…"

He sensed Amy's arm slip slightly in his grip, but he couldn't take the chance of calling for help; if any more holes opened up, Natalie would just be in the same predicament…

"Hold on," he said, tightening his grip on Amy's arm.

"I can-!" Natalie began from the corner of the room.

"Stay where you are and keep K-9 safe; until this thing's stopped, we can't risk any more hole incidents!" the Doctor said firmly, trying to ignore the fact that Amy was definitely further in the hole now than she had been when he'd started this. "They'll shut the drill down and we'll all be fine…"

"What's pulling me?" Amy asked, looking anxiously up at him as she was pulled down to only her head and arms. "What's under the earth? I don't want to suffocate under there."

"Amy, don't give up!" the Doctor yelled, not wanting to consider all the possible answers to her question (God, if these people had found another pocket of Stahlman's Gas, he would _not_ be happy…)

Then Amy's hands slipped from his grasp, and all the Doctor could do was stare at the hole in horror.

He'd lost Amy, nobody here had any reason to trust him, his own daughter was getting a terrible introduction to his favourite planet, and he didn't even know what he was dealing with right now…


	30. From Beneath

Staring at the data on the screen in front of him, having dived into work as soon as he'd confirmed that he couldn't get Amy out but not wanting to voice his theories to Natalie and panic his daughter so soon after finding her again, the Doctor could only pray that he could find something of use among this mass of information before it was too late for Amy or any of the other victims. A few explanations had already occurred to him, starting with the idea of the ground retaliating in some manner to the original drill, but it was hard to rule out anything this early in the crisis, and he needed more data to come to a clear decision.

"What are you doing?" Nasreen asked, after looking uncertainly at him for a few moments.

"Hacking into your records," the Doctor clarified, as though this was no big deal. "Reports, samples, sensors, good, just unite the data, make it all one big conversation, let's have a look… So. We are here and this is your drill hole. 21.009 kilometres. Well done."

"Thank you," Nasreen smiled at him uncertainly. "It's taken us a long time."

"But… why dig here?" Natalie asked uncertainly. "What made you dig in a random village?"

"It's not that random, actually," Nasreen noted. "We found patches of grass in this area, containing trace minerals unseen in this country for twenty million years."

"That blue grass you noted earlier?" Natalie asked her father.

"Which is a problem," the Doctor noted grimly, mentally slotting more pieces into place in his current puzzle. "Those trace minerals weren't X marking the spot, saying 'dig here'; they were basically a warning to stay away. 'Cause while you've been drilling down... somebody else has been drilling up."

"Drilling up?" Natalie repeated. "How can something be drilling up?"

"Through these," the Doctor indicated, adjusting one of the monitors to display a winding network of tunnels around the main green tunnel that represented Nasreen's work. "Whole network of tunnels, all the way down."

"But we surveyed the area-" the older man began.

"Which means you only found what you were looking for; happens more often than you'd think," the Doctor noted grimly.

"Then what's that?" Nasreen asked, indicating something moving at the bottom of the newly-discovered tunnel network.

"Heat signals?" Natalie noted, studying the readings in surprise. "But they're reading both hot and cold… and they're so fast… how is that possible?"

"How many people live nearby?" the Doctor asked, not wanting to tackle that one until he'd confirmed his theory; he had at least one idea right now, but he had to be sure he wasn't seeing metaphorical horses before he dismissed zebras as an option…

"Just my daughter and her family," the older man said. "The rest travel in."

"Right," the Doctor said grimly, at least noting that he didn't have to worry about too many innocent people getting caught in any potential crossfire. "Natalie, see if you find Tony's family; K9, you and Nasreen work on this equipment; Tony, grab the equipment and follow me."

"Why?" Nasreen asked. "What's the problem?"

"That noise isn't a drill; it's a transport," the Doctor explained urgently as he picked up one of the nearest computers. "Three of them, thirty kilometres down, rate of speed looks about a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour. Should be here in...ooh, quite soon, twelve minutes. Whatever attacked us is on its way up, now, and we need to be ready immediately."

He didn't know what he could do against whatever was coming for them, but he had a few ideas about what they were dealing with, and none of them were good, which meant that he needed time alone to assess the situation and think on his options…

* * *

As the Doctor left the room, Natalie took a moment to be sure that Nasreen and Tony were going along with his orders before she left the building to search for Tony's family. Running back through the corridors, she soon made her way to the gate that her father had used to gain access to the compound in the first place, only to see a woman who seemed to be a decade or so older than her father's current body running down the road with a young boy behind her.  
  
"Are you all-?" she began.  
  
"Who are _you_?" the woman said, looking at her in confusion as she came to a halt at the gate.  
  
"Natalie Kriener," Natalie replied, using her new name for the first time to someone who didn't know her true history. "My… colleagues and I are here investigating recent events-"  
  
"You mean that's your box up there?" the woman cut in, indicating the direction where the TARDIS had materialised. "We were wondering what it was; some sort of mobile crime lab?"  
  
"…Something like that," Natalie nodded, deciding to go with the initial assumption rather than ask any awkward questions. "I'm sorry, but-"  
  
"Is this about the missing bodies?"  
  
"Missing bodies?" Natalie repeated, looking urgently at the boy. "Where?"  
  
"In… the graveyard," the woman said, looking uncertainly at her. "I called about it-"  
  
"Oh, _you_ called?" Natalie smiled, recalling one of her father's lessons; when you didn't know what anyone was talking about while faced with a potential crisis, fake it until you do. "Sorry about that; I just have to be sure who knows what... which reminds me, can you confirm what you mentioned in your last call?"  
  
"Just about the missing bodies," the woman said uncertainly, holding out a hand for Natalie to shake. "Ambrose Northover; I run the meals on wheels for the whole valley. This is my son, Elliott."  
  
"Where's your uniform?" the boy asked.  
  
"Casual clothes," Natalie said, remembering some of Amy's quick crash courses in blending in on Earth before focusing on Ambrose. "Now then, what makes these missing bodies particularly distinctive?"  
  
"We found that Aunt Gladys's body had vanished from its grave and there wasn't any sign that somebody had gone after it from above or the side," Elliott explained.  
  
"Elliott!" Ambrose looked sharply at her son.  
  
"No, that's interesting…" Natalie looked at the boy thoughtfully. "So… you think that someone took it from underground?"  
  
Just as the boy nodded, Natalie's eyes widened in horror as another detail came to her. "Amy…"  
  
"Amy?" Ambrose asked.  
  
"My… colleague," Natalie said, shaking her head and indicating the door. "Follow me; you should tell this to… Doctor Smith."  
  
"Doctor Smith?"  
  
"My superior," Natalie said briefly, turning around to walk back along the corridor to her father; she appreciated how he was trying to consider her a daughter despite her unconventional origins, but it was easier to fall back on the idea that he was her military superior when they had to keep their real relationship secret. "Follow me; he can give you the details."  
  
With those quick instructions, Natalie turned around and hurried back through the dirty corridors until she reached the hall where she'd left her father.  
  
"Dad?" Ambrose looked at the older man as they joined the rest of the group.  
  
"Ambrose?" Tony said in response. "What are you two doing here?"  
  
"Natalie!" the Doctor smiled at her, breaking the suddenly tense moment between father and son. "Good news!"  
  
"You've found Amy?" Natalie asked hopefully.  
  
"Still working on that, but I _can_ confirm that we're dealing with someone capable of bio-programming," the Doctor smiled.  
  
"Bio-what?" Nasreen cut in.  
  
"Bio-signals are used to resonate the internal molecular structure of natural objects," the Doctor said briefly, leaving Natalie looking at her father in surprise as he nonchalantly discussed advanced technology with people she was fairly sure weren't capable of even theorising that such a thing was possible. "Normally used on jungle planets to help construction and engineering projects, which does raise the question of what it's doing _here_ stopping drilling projects…"  
  
"Jungle planets?" Nasreen repeated incredulously.  
  
"What are you _talking_ about?" Tony cut in. "You're saying something down there… _programmed_ the ground to attack us? It's just the Earth's crust down there; how can _anything_ be coming up?"  
  
"You'd be surprised what can be down there," the Doctor said, his tone grim before he looked over at the rest of their small group. "We need to-"  
  
A faint whirring sound reached Natalie's ears, prompting her to turn and run back down the corridor once again, followed closely by her father and the rest of the group. Reaching the end of the corridor, Natalie was just in time to see some kind of strange red energy streak across the sky before it faded from view.  
  
"Oh no…" her father said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a slingshot, aiming and firing a small rock into the sky, triggering another red glow as the rock struck something in the air. Repeating his defiance of this discovery, he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the air, revealing a vast red dome enveloping their current location.  
  
"Energy signal originating from under the earth," he said, grimly looking at their new associates. "We're trapped."  
  
"And now the graves are eating people," Natalie added.  
  
"They're what?" the Doctor looked back at the new arrivals. "How do you know that?"  
  
"Empty graves with no sign that anything got at them from above or the sides," Elliot explained.  
  
"I know it doesn't make sense," the boy's mother began, "but he's all-"  
  
"When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth," Elliot cut in.  
  
"Ah, Sherlock Holmes," the Doctor smiled, nodding at the boy in approval despite his mother's brief glare at the interruption. "Arthur took inspiration from so many sources; I sometimes wonder how old Sherlock felt about all those stories about cases he didn't actually investigate…"  
  
"Sherlock Holmes was fictional."  
  
"Oh, the _name_ was fictional, but the _detective_ was real enough; I met him once or twice, actually," the Doctor began, before his expression hardened as he hit his forehead in frustration. "Time for that later; we've got less than nine minutes and no time to break this barrier before they get up here, so we need to get somewhere defensible, work out what we're up against, and then sort out how to get Amy back…"  
  
"Affirmative," K9 noted. "Time until subterranean assault reaches ground level; eight minutes forty-two seconds."  
  
"You heard the dog," the Doctor said urgently, scanning his surroundings before he picked his target. "Everyone into the church; go!"  
  
With that order given, the Doctor led the group of civilians towards the church, Natalie picking up K9 to follow him as they ran. She vaguely heard Ambrose talking to Tony and Nasreen asking about someone called 'Mo', but this wasn't the time to ask for details when her father was this worried and she still didn't know precisely what had happened to Amy. The church they were now hiding in was filled with boxes and discarded junk, to say nothing of being in a state of obvious disrepair even if Natalie didn't know what this building had been for originally, but there was enough space for the Doctor to gather some of Nasreen's equipment from the factory and move it to the church.  
  
"So," Ambrose looked critically around as the other adults carried equipment, "we can't get out, we can't contact anyone. And something, the something that took my husband, is coming up through the Earth."  
  
"It took our friend too-!" Natalie began.  
  
"And we can be ready for this if we move quickly enough," the Doctor cut in.  
  
"Ready for what?" Ambrose protested. "What is this?"  
  
"He's telling the truth, love," Tony noted as he worked on a set of cables.  
  
"Come on, it's not the first time-!" Ambrose began.  
  
"But I'm fairly sure it _is_ the first time something like that energy field's appeared over an area while you're in it, correct?" Natalie countered, indicating the still-faintly visible energy bubble surrounding them.  
  
"Look, Ambrose, we saw the Doctor's friend get taken, OK?" Nasreen said, stepping forward before the other woman could say anything else. "You saw the lightning in the sky. I have seen the impossible today, and the only person who's made any sense of it, for me, is the Doctor."  
  
"Him?"  
  
"Me," the Doctor nodded at the incredulous young woman.  
  
"Can you get my dad back?" Elliot called over from the end of the room.  
  
"Yes," the Doctor nodded confidently at the boy before walking over to glare at Ambrose. "But I need you to trust me and do exactly as I say from this second onwards because we're running out of time."  
  
"So tell us what to do," Ambrose said after a few moments, her tone sceptical even as she seemed resigned to the situation.  
  
"Thank you," the Doctor nodded. "We have less than eight minutes to set up a line of defence. Bring me every phone, camera, every piece of recording or transmitting equipment you can find. Every burglar alarm, every movement sensor, every security light. I want the whole area covered with sensors, and then I need a map to plan out where the cameras actually are."  
  
Natalie and the others could only nod in confirmation before they hurried off to work, Natalie following the lead of her new allies to gather the available resources while wondering what her father had planned.  
  
She knew that he wasn't a soldier, but at times like this, she was reminded why she had admired her father in those few moments they'd spent together after her 'birth'; her father disliked violence, but he had a way of making people want to do what he told them in a crisis. As Elliot drew up a map of the area, the others set up an improvised camera network throughout the dome, along with sensors and triplights, establishing quadrants and ranges to make the best use of their available tools. While she was pacing out a few key settings to be sure that everything had been laid out in the appropriate manner, she noticed her father having a chat with Ambrose about something at a van, with an edge to his expression that left Natalie briefly unnerved, but decided to have faith in her father's plans and focus on her own responsibilities.  
  
"Last one set up!" she smiled as she hurried into the church a couple of minutes later.  
  
"Good," the Doctor grinned.  
  
"So… what's the plan?" Elliot asked curiously, from where he continued sketching at his map.  
  
"Good point," Natalie noted, looking awkwardly at her father. "I mean, I appreciate that the cameras will help us keep track of whatever shows up, but what then?"  
  
"Good question, both of you," the Doctor smiled as he held up the sonic screwdriver. "In a nutshell, if something _does_ arrive, I can use _this_ to send out a sonic pulse through these devices that should temporarily incapacitate most things in the universe."  
  
"You'll knock them out?" Natalie grinned.  
  
"Should give us time to figure out what we're dealing with, anyway," the Doctor nodded, before glancing over at Elliot. "Lovely place to grow up, around here."  
  
"Suppose so," Elliot shrugged. "I want to live in a city one day. Soon as I'm old enough, I'll be off."  
  
"I was the same, where I grew up," the Doctor noted.  
  
"Did you get away?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Do you ever miss it?"  
  
"So much," the Doctor mused, the pain in his eyes the clearest indication Natalie had ever seen of everything her father usually tried to keep hidden.  
  
She wasn't sure she'd ever have the courage to do what he had done; for a man who claimed he wasn't a soldier, the sacrifices he'd made to protect so many others…  
  
"Is it monsters coming?" Elliot put in. "Have you met monsters before?"  
  
"Yeah," her father nodded.  
  
"You scared of them?"  
  
"Scared?" Natalie grinned. "If anything, the monsters are scared of _him_."  
  
"And I'll get your father back from them," the Doctor affirmed. "No question."  
  
With that said, he took one last assessment of the map before looking at Natalie. "Come on; we've got a few things to confirm and… how long?"  
  
"One minute twelve seconds, Master," K9 added from the corner.  
  
"And it's… getting darker?" Natalie noted, glancing out of the window at the sky above in surprise. "How can it be getting darker already?"  
  
"Shutting out light within the barricade to try and keep us isolated," the Doctor answered briefly. "In other words…"  
  
A rumbling sound filled the air. "They're here."  
  
"'They'?" Natalie asked.  
  
"Only ideas right now, but they're not good ones," the Doctor said, tapping his chin thoughtfully before he turned to study the map. "Well, we have some kind of perimeter established; all we need now is something to set it off…"  
  
As the church door opened again, Natalie looked anxiously up, but it was just Nasreen and Tony returning to their 'base', both parties looking flustered but comparatively calm despite this circumstances. Natalie didn't have time to ask how they were before the ground started shaking again, the Doctor's hands flying over the controls of the computer he'd programmed to take in data from all the systems they'd just set up before the screen went dark.  
  
"No power," Tony said.  
  
"It's deliberate," the Doctor and Natalie said simultaneously.  
  
"Is anything left?" Natalie asked, not wanting to dwell on that issue.  
  
"I managed to get some kind of idea of where they're coming from before the power went down, but I can't be that specific…" the Doctor mused, before he held up a hand as another tremor shook the room. For the next few moments, the Doctor stood in silence, the rest of the room following his example as though by some unspoken order, before the tremor stopped, prompting the Doctor to shake his head and walk towards the door.  
  
"Where are you going?" Ambrose asked.  
  
"To find them."  
  
" _Find_ them?" the woman repeated incredulously. "You just told us to hide-!"  
  
"Whatever was coming up can't have been that big or we would have specifically heard it come out of the ground, so I have reason to believe we're not dealing with a large crew right now," the Doctor countered, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a pair of large sunglasses of all things. "Stay here; I'll be back."  
  
Natalie didn't need to have known her father for along to know that he was specifically addressing her with that last comment, but she decided not to press the issue, focusing instead on making sure that all other entrances to the church were properly secured. Elliott expressed some disappointment when he realised that he didn't have his earphones, but Natalie had quickly reminded him to focus on what was important and he turned his attention back to his task.  
  
Once the various ground entrances had been dealt with, Natalie sent the rest of the group to assess the upper level for potential entry points while she hurried from the building through the main door. Her father hadn't provided her with a sonic screwdriver directly yet, but she had found a thinner model in a red coat in the wardrobe while she was searching for some new clothes; it was enough to lock the church door behind her in the absence of a key. Searching the darkened surroundings, Natalie soon saw something moving around the edge of the graveyard, slowly advancing in that direction as she strained her ears for any further sign.  
  
She respected her father's decision not to use weapons, but that didn't mean she was going to just wait for whatever was out there to find her…  
  
The sound of something lashing out behind her prompted her to turn around and grab something that looked like a tongue of all things. As her eyes followed the tongue to the other end, she found herself looking at a slim figure wearing some kind of maroon leather jacket over a strange silver armour, along with a silver face that could have been a mask or a true face.  
  
"What-?" Natalie began, before the creature yanked its tongue back, drawing her along with it. As the creature raised a hand with a strange-looking gun in it, Natalie shifted her position and quickly kicked out at her would-be captor, knocking the creature down as she released her grip on the tongue. Landing on her feet, Natalie quickly assessed the fallen creature, confirming that whatever it was appeared to be breathing but unconscious.  
  
"I thought I told you to stay put?"  
  
"And Amy told me that I should listen to you about half the time when you say that," Natalie countered, looking up at her father as he approached her; she didn't know if there was some trick of her people he hadn't taught her yet or if he was just that good, but there were times when she just couldn't hear her father coming. "Anyway, I did it, right?"  
  
"That you did," the Doctor nodded, moving the sunglasses to the bridge of his nose as he studied the creature. "And it's cold-blooded… well, at least that confirms what we're up against…"  
  
"It does?" Natalie asked, before the ever-familiar rumbling filled the air again. For a moment she looked anxiously around, but relaxed as she realised that her father was relatively calm about it, even as he thoughtfully studied the form lying between them.  
  
"They've gone," the Doctor said grimly. "And now both sides have hostages."  
  
"Hostages?"  
  
"That's how they're going to see it," the Doctor clarified, turning his gaze back to the fallen figure. "Which means we have to talk with them before things escalate too far…"


	31. Into the Earth

A few minutes later, natural daylight restored and their captive relocated to a basement of the church, Natalie stood anxiously behind her father as he sat in front of the strange figure, her father cross-legged and remarkably casual despite what the creature had almost done earlier. Even in light, Natalie couldn't tell much more about this creature apart from that it had grey skin and green horns while wearing some kind of armour.

"And… this is safe?" she asked, after a moment's silence following her attaching the chains to the creature as indicated.

"The venom gland needs time to recharge after use, and our friend already attacked me earlier," the Doctor said solemnly. "We'll be fine."

With that said, the Doctor turned to look directly at the creature, which was moving slowly along the floor towards him, as far as its bonds would allow while it remained in a crouching posture.

"I'm the Doctor," her father said, carefully raising his hands in a placating gesture. "I've come to talk. I'm going to remove your mask."

Squatting down, the Doctor reached out and gently removed the mask, revealing a far more human face, even if it was still green and scaled rather than the smooth faces Natalie was becoming familiar with, as well as a complex gathering of frills and horns on the back of its head.

"You are beautiful," the Doctor said solemnly. "Remnant of a bygone age on planet Earth. And by the way, lovely mode of travel! Geothermal currents, projecting you up through a network of tunnels. Gorgeous! Mind if I sit?"

With that said, he stood up, picked up an old folding chair from a nearby pile, and set it up in front of the creature, settling down with his arms folded.

"Now," the Doctor said, "your people have a friend of mine. I want her back. Why did you come to the surface? What do you want? Oh, I do hate a monologue. Give us a bit back. How many are you?"

"I am the last of my species," the creature said, in a low tone that seemed to confirm that she was female.

"Really?" the Doctor said, before smiling slightly. "No. 'Last of the species', the Klempari Defence. As an interrogation defence, it's a bit old hat, I'm afraid."

"I am the last of my species," the creature repeated.

"No," the Doctor countered. "Because I've _been_ the last of my species and I know how it sits in a heart, so don't insult me. Let's start again; tell me your name."

"Ayala," the creature said, after staring uncertainly at the Doctor for a moment (Natalie tried not to show how touched she felt at the implication of that last statement; the idea that she had made her father feel that much better was very moving).

"How long has your tribe been sleeping under the Earth, Alaya?" the Doctor asked, giving her a moment to respond before continuing when she didn't take it. "It's not difficult to work out. You're three hundred million years out of your comfort zone. Question is, what woke you now?"

"We were attacked."

"The drill?" Natalie asked, her military-programmed mind quickly flashing to the obvious explanation.

"Our sensors detected a threat to our life support systems," Ayala said in an urgent tone. "The warrior class was activated to prevent the assault. We will wipe the vermin from the surface and reclaim our planet."

"Do we have to say vermin?" the Doctor asked. "They're really very nice."

"And that drill wasn't an 'attack'; they didn't even know you were _here_ until you came up here to start abducting them," Natalie noted firmly.

"Primitive apes," the creature said dismissively,

"Extraordinary species," the Doctor corrected. "You attack them, they'll fight back. _But_ there's a peace to be brokered here. I can help you with that."

"This land is ours," the creature said in an urgent tone. "We lived here long before the apes."

"And that makes it yours?" Natalie cut in indignantly. "It's been a long time since you were in any position on this planet; you don't get to kick out the new tenants just because you decided to go away for a while-!"

"We did not _decide_ -!"

"Easy!" the Doctor countered, stepping in between the two women with a firm glare before settling his gaze on the green woman. "Sorry about her; she's still working out the full details of the situation, but she _is_ right when she says that humans won't give up the planet just because you feel entitled."

"So we destroy them."

"That's your _first_ response?" Natalie asked indignantly. "You don't like something, so you kill them?"

"You underestimate them," the Doctor said firmly.

"You underestimate us."

"One tribe of homo reptilia against six billion humans," the Doctor noted. "You've got your work cut out."

"We did not initiate combat, but we can still win," Ayala said, standing up to glare at him.

" _You_ started this; they didn't even know you were down there when they started drilling!" Natalie insisted.

"Exactly," the Doctor said, still sitting as he stared at Ayala. "This can still end peacefully, Ayala; tell me where my friend is, return the people you stole, and we can make this work without a battle."

"No," Ayala said.

"We won't let you provoke war, Ayala," the Doctor said after it was clear their prisoner had nothing more to say, standing up to move the chair back to where he had found it. "There will be no battle here today."

"The fire of war is already lit; a massacre is due," Ayala said, in a tone that reminded Natalie uncomfortably of General Cobb.

"Not while we're here," the Doctor said, standing up and turning to leave the room.

"I'll gladly die for my cause," Ayala said. "What will you sacrifice for yours?"

"Dying for a cause is easy," Natalie said, glaring pointedly at the woman as her father left. "Living with what you have to do in an impossible situation is another matter."

She still wasn't clear on who this woman was, but based on her father's reaction, she doubted that this woman's claim that Earth belonged to her people had enough weight behind it for that belief to be justified even if her father didn't like humans so much.

* * *

Less than half an hour later, as her father headed to the TARDIS with Nasreen, Natalie could only cross her fingers and pray that she could stop anyone doing something stupid. Her father might have faith in her ability to handle herself, but she sometimes wondered if he even remembered that she had been 'bred' to act as a soldier first and foremost. She wanted to follow his example, and she appreciated his plan to find a better way… she just didn't know if she was ready to do that on her _own_.  
  
On an academic level, she could appreciate her father's explanation for why this was a complicated situation, considering that these people had apparently evolved on Earth _before_ the human race developed themselves, but on the other hand, when she and her father had several human friends, it was hard to imagine why she shouldn't sympathise with them over these reptiles. On a military level she could understand why these 'Silurians' had reacted so promptly, but on a more basic level, their reaction had been so immediate that she worried about what it meant for her father's plans to negotiate.  
  
Still… no matter what the odds were against her success, she had to have faith that he could do it, just as she had to have faith that the remaining humans here wouldn't kill anyone. Tony and Ambrose were both worried about the future, particularly when Tony was showing a worrying reaction to his earlier attack, but Natalie was holding out hope that as long as Elliot was still here, neither of them would do anything too stupid in front of their son/grandson…  
  
" _Every last ape will be wiped from the face of my beloved planet_."  
  
Natalie refused to let that woman be right; if Ayala wanted to believe that humanity were all monsters who deserved to die, she was going to make it her personal mission to prove that thing wrong. Her father believed in this species and Amy had proven herself to be far better than some of the soldiers she'd been 'born' to fight alongside on Messaline, and Natalie wasn't going to sit by and let some ancient lizards decide that humanity should be killed off just because they felt like they had the right to do so.

* * *

Staring out at the Silurian city below the drill, the Doctor wondered why it could never be simple when he was dealing with these creatures. He hadn't managed to see the last couple of Silurian colonies he'd encountered in depth, as he'd been dragged straight to the cells as soon as he'd stumbled across the entrance to their caves and everything had been contained in tunnels rather than this kind of large cavern, but he was fairly sure that the colonies he'd found in the Galapagos and Wenley Moor had never been this comparatively large.  
  
On the one hand, that raised the stakes for what he was about to do, but on the other hand, if this was a full city rather than a military colony, he might be able to reach someone in a position of authority who wouldn't be quite as military-minded as some of the Silurians he'd had to deal with in the past…  
  
"This place is enormous and deserted," he noted, walking with Nasreen along stone pathways above the buildings, molten magma far below them, scanning the buildings with his conic screwdriver. "The majority of the race are probably still asleep; we need to find Amy by tracking human heat signatures."  
  
"But how can this all be here?" Nasreen asked, looking at their surroundings in awe. "I mean, these plants…"  
  
"Must be getting closer to the centre of the city," the Doctor said, noting the way the plants had gathered around the pillars/buildings as they entered a lower tunnel, trying to ignore the questions behind him; he would appreciate Nasreen's curiosity under normal circumstances, but he didn't have time to answer that when he had to find someone in charge before anything happened to Amy.  
  
"You're sure this is the best way to enter?" Nasreen asked, looking uncertainly around the green-illuminated tunnel, ribbed walls mixed with squared pillars.  
  
"Front door approach!" the Doctor said confidently; stealth wouldn't help the impression he was trying to create right now. "Definitely! Always the best way…"  
  
" _Hostile life force detected, area 17_ ," a voice suddenly announced over a speaker, preceded by an alarm.  
  
"Apart from the back door approach," the Doctor noted, stopping and turning quickly around to head back down the tunnel. "That's also good; sometimes better…"  
  
"Doctor!" Nasreen yelled, as a door opened and Silurian guards emerged from the other end of the tunnel, just as the warning repeated itself and another group of Silurians emerged from behind them.  
  
"We're not hostile, we're not armed!" the Doctor yelled, grabbing Nasreen's arm and holding it up in a placating gesture. "We're here in peace!"  
  
As gas emerged from the Silurian weapons, the Doctor cursed his limited experience with this kind of technology; the gas overwhelmed him far too quickly for even his respiratory bypass system to react to the threat before he had collapsed.  
  
 _Amy_ …


	32. Pleas Against War

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, a few scenes have been skipped to focus on what was actually changed from canon, but I make reference to what happened in them anyway, and I hope you enjoy the results  
> It comes up as a brief reference later in this chapter, so I'll just reiterate this now; in this timeline, the Doctor never regenerated into his War incarnation, and the Tenth Doctor never had his half-regeneration, so the Eleventh Doctor still has two regenerations left to him even if he naturally doesn't want to use them

If there was one skill Amy had particularly enjoyed learning from the Doctor, it was picking pockets. It was a smaller skill in the grand scheme of things, and he had made it clear that he would disapprove if she did it for explicitly criminal purposes, but there was something enjoyable about being able to get one-up on the enemy without them even knowing what she was doing. The lizard-scientist hadn't even realised that Amy had taken his control device from his pocket before he was called away by some kind of warning, giving her the perfect chance to deactivate their locks and get out of the cell.

She couldn't be sure what was going on here, but she had a couple of intriguing ideas. The Doctor had told her a lot of stories over the years, but the one she really remembered in this scenario was his talk about how Earth had been populated by sentient reptiles known as Silurians before they went into stasis to escape a predicted environmental catastrophe, only to 'oversleep' because the disaster they'd expected had never happened (or someone had sabotaged the stasis pods for some reason; the Doctor had noted that he'd heard some different reasons for why they'd never retaken the planet on their own).

 _Seriously, how did we get this far as a species with all these aliens- OK, 'non-human' might be the better term here, but the point still stands- dropping in on us in the past? I know the Doctor often shows up to help, but he can't be there_ all _the time, even before this mess with the Faction…_

If these were Silurians, their interest in 'analysing' humans made a certain sense, even if she hated having to follow a thought process that would treat her like an animal, but that left her with the bigger question of how she was going to get herself and her new acquaintance out of here before more Silurians found her.

_Probably underground, so all I need to do is work out where the way up is without getting caught en route… I've probably got the advantage that they think I'm just some over-evolved monkey rather than the protégé of the last of the Time Lords…_

Despite her own confidence, Amy allowed herself a small moment of fear as she considered the scope of what she was dealing with; she'd never considered herself claustrophobic, but the idea of being trapped this far underground wasn't a comfortable one.

_God, I wish the Doctor was here._

* * *

Natalie would never complain about being given an easy job in a crisis, but she had to admit that she was somewhat uncomfortable at just how simple guard duty had been so far. Ambrose was obviously concerned about what had happened to her husband, as well as the problem of her father's infection by whatever toxin that thing had used on him earlier, but her son's presence seemed to be helping Ambrose stay calm, even if Ayala continued to be disturbingly confident about what she believed would happen to her.  
  
Right now, however, Natalie wasn't sure if she was more annoyed at the lizard-woman who seemed determined and willing to die or the human woman who was becoming so concerned about who she, her father and K9 really were. People shouldn't be that worried about the fact that her father didn't officially work with anyone when his priority was always about trying to keep people safe; did who he worked for really matter so long as he got the job done?  
  
"Why are you doing this?" she asked, looking curiously at her prisoner after a few moments of silence.  
  
"We will reclaim our planet-"  
  
"See, it's the 'reclaim' part I have trouble with," Natalie cut in. "You ruled this planet _once_ , but even if I look at it that way, you were in charge centuries ago, and you can't have the numbers here to keep up a massive war against the human race; why are you doing this?"  
  
"They are apes-"  
  
"They're _people_. Like my father said, they're really very nice… well, maybe they're not perfect, but you're not exactly in a position to cast any stones in that regard either."  
  
"They attacked us-"  
  
"That was an accident; they didn't even know you were _down there_!" Natalie protested, privately wondering if this was what her father meant when he warned her that people were hard to convince; it shouldn't be this hard for sentient beings like the Silurians to understand the idea that they could have been 'attacked' by accident. "And you're going to let a man die because of-"  
  
"He will be the first ape death of the coming war-"  
  
" _No_ ," Natalie slammed one hand on the ground, glaring firmly at Ayala. "You talk about 'war', but what do you think is going to happen in that war?"  
  
"We will win-"  
  
"Maybe you will, but maybe you won't; have you ever thought about that?" Natalie asked, unable to believe how certain this woman was acting about the idea of her future victory. "You keep judging us as though we're stupid apes, but you don't even _know_ what the people of this world have to throw against you; if you start out thinking that everyone's just a dumb animal you're not going to get anywhere!"  
  
"You _are_ nothing but animals-"  
  
"How are we animals? You reacted to a potential threat by trying to kill us before finding out what had happened, and we're just trying to talk to you now that we know you're down there; I'm not saying we're perfect, but this isn't the way to deal with our people!"  
  
After a few more moments of silent staring, Natalie sighed and stood up, turning away from the prisoner to head back up the stairs. Her father would probably be able to come up with some kind of better speech, but right now all she had going for herself was her fighting skills, which was hardly going to be useful in a situation like this.  
  
She didn't know how she was meant to talk down a fanatic when she also had to keep an eye on the other humans up here, but she was coming to realise that she hadn't been given as easy a task as she had believed.  
  
She wanted to be more than the soldier she'd been created to be, but take her out of a combat environment and she was so far out of her comfort zone it was ridiculous.  
  
 _Of course, any challenge is just another type of battle, and I was practically created to win battles; this just means changing tactics…_  
  
"Don't," she said, slamming an arm against the wall to stop Tony as he prepared to walk towards the basement 'cell'.  
  
"But I-" Tony began.  
  
"She's a fanatic xenophobic warrior who's convinced that you're nothing but an animal that got above itself; you can't convince her to cure you, and she'll just delight in you proving her point about your 'inferiority' if you try and ask you for help," the former soldier said simply. "I appreciate that you're scared, but my- the Doctor _will_ find a solution; just… hold on."  
  
Looking at the older man, Natalie prayed that he would accept her argument; her father's training was good, but she was still an amateur at talking to people if they didn't have a military background. Right now, she could use her own experience of General Cobb on her 'homeworld' to give her some idea of how fanatics would reaction, but that could only take her so far in a situation like this.  
  
 _Be OK down there, Dad_ …  
  
She was going to need to keep a closer eye on Ayala; the humans couldn't go anywhere, and Ayala couldn't get out of those bonds or she would probably have done so already, but that didn't mean that someone wouldn't end up doing something stupid…

* * *

_Silurians_ , the Doctor mused to himself as he walked into the conference room. _No matter how much they talk about being more 'civilised', they always throw me in their cells the first time we meet_.  
  
The decontamination experience had been a close one- he might have exaggerated just how much his body relied on the 'contaminants' they were planning to purge from him, but losing them still wouldn't have been pleasant- but the fact remained that, no matter how much the Silurians preached their 'superiority' over humans, they always ended up knocking him out and locking him up whenever he was in their power, rather than giving him the chance to explain himself and his presence reasonably.  
  
Still, at least this time around he was dealing with a more balanced range of perspectives from the Silurian leaders. Those confrontations he'd had in his third incarnation had been difficult, considering that young Silurian had been so eager for war, and Tulok had obvious reasons for thinking of humanity as nothing but 'pets' that had gotten above themselves, but at least Ichtar and the Triad had been fairly reasonable even if they'd been too caught up in their belief that they were Earth's 'rightful owners' to accept that humanity didn't deserve what they were planning to do. Restac and Ayalah were the type of Silurian he'd regretfully come to expect over the years, so caught up in their prejudices and arrogance that they couldn't accept the need for a balanced view- although he wondered what 'gene-train' meant regarding Silurian reproductive habits- but at least Malokeh had been willing to listen once he got the chance to explain what he was doing down here.  
  
 _Granted, they didn't react well when I brought up what happened to the last tribe I met, and Restac still wanted me dead over anything else, but at least Malokeh wasn't blindly insisting that I was an invading ape who attacked them first_.  
  
Of course, he also had to give Nasreen credit; for someone who hadn't been aware of other sentient species before now, she was actually coping rather well with what had happened. She'd expressed scientific curiosity about the Silurians without getting bogged down in the idea that they were 'impossible', accepted his explanation for their going into stasis in the first place, and even managed to remain fairly calm despite the announcement of their impending execution.  
  
 _Which isn't to say I don't hope that something changes sooner rather than later; I'd rather not rely on regeneration to get out of this, even if I could be sure that they wouldn't just kill me again afterwards…_  
  
Just once, he wished that he could meet a group of Silurians who were willing to work with humans from the beginning, rather than both sides basically panicking or getting angry and starting to attack the other over some perceived 'wrong'.

* * *

"Don't," Natalie said, looking warningly at Ambrose as the woman walked towards the cell door, a taser in her hand and a cold expression on her face that told Natalie everything she needed to know about what this woman planned to do. "I told your father, and I'm telling you; there's no point going in there."  
  
"Get out of the way," the woman said, her body trembling as she glared at Natalie.  
  
"I can't do that."  
  
"You're _protecting_ -?"  
  
"You," Natalie interrupted, folding her arms as she stared at Ambrose. "If you go in there, you'll never make her talk; you're dealing with a fanatic who's convinced that she's just the exterminator clearing out her home, and would you be willing to listen to the rats if they tried to tell you they had rights?"  
  
"We're not animals; we can think-!"  
  
"And she doesn't care about that," Natalie said firmly. "She's a trained soldier who's utterly certain that she's right, so anything you do will just reaffirm her belief that she's eliminating vermin."  
  
"How can you be sure?"  
  
"Because I was born into a war like that," Natalie said, hoping that what she was about to say wouldn't sound too suspicious. "I was a soldier in a war that had been going on since before I was born, led by a general who was so fanatical that he was convinced the other side was nothing but vermin, and the only way to win was the complete eradication of the enemy."  
  
"Oh," Ambrose said, her initial resolution faltering in the face of Natalie's simple certainty, before she looked more curiously at the young woman. "How… did you do it?"  
  
"Do it?"  
  
"Move past… well, an attitude like that?" Ambrose clarified. "If you were a soldier and he was your… commanding officer…"  
  
"It all changed when I met the Doctor."  
  
"And Amy?"  
  
"No, he was on his own when… I met him," Natalie clarified, smiling slightly at the memory of those awkward moments with her father before she focused on Ambrose. "My point is that meeting him taught me that, no matter what we do or what we try to say, there are always going to be some people who are so fixated in their beliefs that they will give anything, even their own lives, for a cause they totally believe in. You can't convince her that she's wrong, but you _can_ recognise what you shouldn't do and be the better person in this situation."  
  
"This is my father's _life_ ; I'm just protecting my family-"  
  
"And I can understand that, but there are times when you need to ask yourself just how far they would _want_ you to go," Natalie cut her off. "If my father was in danger, I would do everything I could to save him, but I also know that he wouldn't want me to… cross some lines… for his sake. The Silurians want to believe you're nothing but animals, and the woman in there would frankly be _happy_ if you proved her right by attacking her; it's up to you to prove that you can be more than what they want you to be."  
  
"Which means letting my father die?" Ambrose asked, even as she put the taser back in her pocket.  
  
"Which means having faith that… my colleagues… and I can help save him," Natalie stared grimly at her. "You'll never convince Ayala that your father is worth saving, but we might manage to find some way around that on our own; just wait and don't do anything… rash, understand?"  
  
Privately, Natalie wondered if she should take a look at Tony's condition, but put that thought aside; she had some 'training' programmed into her mind so that she could act as a field medic, but no real experience in dealing with poisons, and she doubted that whatever the Hath might have used would have had anything in common with whatever was killing Tony right now…  
  
The sound of a sudden, sharp gasp from the room behind her cut off Natalie's train of thought. Spinning around, she saw a woman in the distinctive bone armour of Faction Paradox, extracting a sharp bone claw from the chest of their Silurian prisoner, both with a sick smile on their faces even as the lizard-woman died.  
  
"What the-?" Ambrose asked.  
  
"An agent of Faction Paradox," Natalie said, clenching her fists as she walked into the room, the woman in bone turning to look at her. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"Fixing things," the woman smiled, as the bone claw retracted into her armour. "If the Doctor thinks he can use Time's current state for his benefit, we are obligated to stop him; the Grandfather created these opportunities and if the Doctor should dare to try and use them for his own selfish benefit-"  
  
" _No_ ," Natalie said resolutely, channeling her rage as she stepped into the room, holding out a hand to halt Ambrose as she looked at the woman in bone. "My father is trying to _help_ people-"  
  
"And you think we aren't?" the woman smiled. "Who's to say that humanity won't become stronger by engaging the Silurians-?"  
  
"You just want to smash everything," Natalie cut the woman off. "Don't try and dress it up as something noble; I _know_ you."  
  
"As you wish," the woman shook her head, looking mockingly at Natalie for a moment before raising her arms as the bone claws emerged once more. Just as the Faction soldier began to advance, Natalie grabbed Ambrose's taser and rammed it between the gaps in the ribcage-armour, grim satisfaction on her face as the woman fell to the ground.  
  
"Who-?" Ambrose began.  
  
"Not important," Natalie cut Ambrose off, handing the woman back her taser before walking over to the Faction soldier. "I'll secure this person somewhere else, and then… we'll work out what to do with that."  
  
She hadn't been able to keep Ayala alive, but maybe she could still stop this situation degenerating into open warfare if she could present it to the other Silurians the right way…


	33. The Silurian Conference

"Look," the Doctor protested, once again wondering why so many intelligent species could suffer from such closed minds as Restac marched him and Nasreen into some kind of central tribunal, a small group of other soldiers having joined Restac's march even as the Silurian doctor who'd been examining the non-Silurians earlier had left, "I understand that you're angry, but _what_ do you seriously think you're accomplishing here?"

"We are proving how far we will go to the apes-"

"Firstly, if you think they don't believe you'd go that far, you _really_ underestimate your opponents, and secondly, this is _not_ a war with the human race!" the Doctor glared at Restac in frustration. "You are declaring war because of the actions of _one small_ group of people who _didn't even know you were down here_!"

"That is-"

"What?" the Doctor cut her off, looking at Restac indignantly. "Impossible? Why? You hid down here for centuries and left no fossilised remains of your culture behind; even if they found out about you, why would the human race _want_ to make you aware of their existence? If they're the ruthless, mindless animals you think they are, they'd have found you and killed you before you could wake up; if they're the rational beings I'm _telling_ you they are, then isn't it _possible_ that there's been a horrible mistake?"

The fact that Restac just stared at him in silence was enough for the Doctor to know he'd made a point, even if he wasn't optimistic enough to believe it would stop her completely.

"You have a _right_ to be anxious, but do you honestly think that doing this will accomplish anything?" the Doctor asked, praying that just once he'd manage to make his point. "You're making the mistake of so many people of allowing your own perceptions and beliefs to cloud the way you react to your enemy; is it so impossible to believe that these 'apes' could have become something more than what they were?"

"You are nothing but animals-"

"And I could argue that you're nothing but jumped-up lizards; doesn't mean I'm any more right than you are," the Doctor countered, resisting the urge to smile in favour of trying to look reassuring. "You have a right to be concerned about what the human race might do, but if you keep looking for enemies all you'll _find_ are enemies; if you don't start trusting people, you're never going to make any kind of progress."

"We are the more advanced species-"

"Because you _started_ first; that's not the same as saying you're smarter," the Doctor cut her off, the urge to smile forgotten in the face of his growing frustration; just once, he wished that the allegedly more advanced species could get the point he was trying to make. "You've been asleep for centuries; you don't have the right to-"

"We have all the rights we require to inforce our authority on our world," Restac glared firmly at him. "You are now subject to military tribunal for your actions against us; prepare for your execution."

"You've decided our sentence before the trial?" Nasreen cut in. "How is _that_ justice?"

"No more than-"

"No more than what _we_ would have done to _you_?" Nasreen asked, looking scathingly at Restac. "I thought you were meant to be _better_ than us? How does judging us without any kind of trial make you better?"

"A fair question," a solemn voice said, the Doctor looking up to see the white-clad Silurian doctor walking back into the room with another older Silurian male, this one wearing elegant dark robes and moving at a slower pace.

"Malokeh?" Restac looked at the older Silurian in surprise. "I believed-"

"That I had left because I agreed with your stratagem and merely did not wish to witness your slaughter?" Malokeh replied with a grim smile. "You make the very mistake that this Doctor has been accusing you of; you make assumptions and don't consider things in greater depth."

"Here here," another, more familiar voice smiled.

" _Amy_?" the Doctor grinned in relief as he looked up to see his companion emerge from a side corridor, carrying a Silurian gun but otherwise nonchalant about her current circumstances, another man behind her. "How are-?"

"Broke out a little while ago, got Mo here out of his cell, and we've just been skulking around here until we found you all," Amy shrugged, despite the curious stares she was attracting from the other Silurian guards. "So… what have we got here?"

"Many things, young lady," the finely-robed Silurian said, staring solemnly around the room. "I am Eldane, of the Silurians; which of you speaks for these people?"

"He-" Amy began.

"Is just the tech support guy when it comes to the crunch," the Doctor cut his companion off, guessing what Amy was about to say. "If I may, Eldane-?"

"You may _not_ ," Restac cut him off, glaring at the Time Lord before turning back to Eldane. "The apes are attacking us!"

"You're our protector, not our commander, Restac," Eldane said, reinforcing the Doctor's high opinion of this man as he took up position at the head of the table. "Unchain them.

"I do not recognize your authority at this time, Eldane," Restac replied.

"Well, then," Eldane said with a brief shrug, "you must shoot me."

Glaring at Eldane in frustration, Restac moved over to Malokeh, clearly unable or unwilling to defy the new arrival.

"You woke him to undermine me," she hissed at the Silurian doctor.

"We're not monsters," Malokeh said, glancing briefly at the humans. "And neither are they."

"What is it about apes you love so much?"

"While you slept, they've evolved," Malokeh said (the Doctor made a note to ask Malokeh why he'd carried out those experiments on an 'evolved' species later; he might want answers, but he wasn't going to put his friends at risk getting them). "I've seen it for myself."

"We used to hunt apes for sport," Restac protested. "When we came underground, they bred and polluted this planet-"

"Shush now, Restac," Eldane said, his tone firm even if he wasn't loud. "Go and play soldiers. I'll let you know if I need you."

"You'll need me," Restac said firmly. "Then we'll see."

As Restac walked off, the Doctor and the rest of his allies stood in silence for a moment, none of them wishing to re-ignite a tense situation, before Eldane turned back to them with a brief smile.

"I… apologise for Restac," he said at last. "She means well, but she is… set in her ways."

"Admirable attitude in some lines of work but a hindrance in others?" the Doctor smiled.

"Quite," Eldane acknowledged, looking curiously at the Doctor. "You were saying…?"

"Doctor John Smith, Eldane," the Doctor replied; Eldane seemed reasonable enough, but without knowing what kind of contact this colony might have with others, he was going to avoid explicitly identifying himself as 'the Doctor' for the moment. "As I was about to say…"

* * *

A few moments later, Amy and Nasreen were sitting opposite Eldane at the long conference-style table in the centre of the room, Mo and Malokeh watching from the side.  
  
"Right," the Doctor said, looking around the table with a smile from his position at its head. "I'd say, you've got a fair bit to talk about."  
  
"How so?" Eldane asked.  
  
"You both want the planet; you both have a genuine claim to it."  
  
"And are you authorised to negotiate on behalf of humanity?"  
  
"As I said earlier, I'm just the scientific advisor," the Doctor grinned, before indicating Amy and Nasreen. "And I advise _them_ that this is a good idea."  
  
"What?!" Nasreen asked.  
  
"Uh… are you sure about this?" Amy asked, swallowing down her initial apprehension as she looked at the Doctor.  
  
"Course I'm sure!" the Doctor grinned, moving to stand behind the two women, placing reassuring hands on their shoulders. "Amy Pond and Nasreen Chaudhry, speaking for the planet! Humanity couldn't have better ambassadors. Come on, who has more fun than us?"  
  
"Uh… Doctor?" Amy asked, standing up and taking his arm. "Can we just… have a word?"  
  
"Of course," the Doctor smiled, glancing back at the others. "Sorry; just got to refine a few details with the ambassador."  
  
"'Ambassador'?" Amy whispered urgently, once they were in a suitable corner of the room. "Can we do this?"  
  
"No reason why not," the Doctor shrugged. "It's not like I'm asking the original K9 to climb stairs; honestly, why Professor Marius missed that design flaw-"  
  
"No, I get that you think I can _do_ this, it's just… _should_ I dothis?" Amy whispered urgently. "You know… with the Faction and all that? Isn't this… changing things?"  
  
"I've told you about fixed points in time, right?"  
  
"Yeah… moments when you absolutely _can't_ change things, right?"  
  
"What I haven't mentioned is that there are the opposite; moments when time is in _flux_ ," the Doctor elaborated. "There are cases where changing history can completely undermine the future you know even if we aren't dealing with a fixed point where tampering with those moments would destroy the Web of Time pretty much instantaneously, but there are also times and places when the fundamental course of history _can_ be altered so long as we take care."  
  
"OK… and this is one of them?"  
  
"Exactly!" the Doctor nodded. "This isn't like trying to stop the Second World War by shooting Hitler or exposing John Wilkes Booth before he can assassinate Lincoln; we're setting the stage for the Silurians to _gradually_ emerge and ally with humanity, waking up a few key colonies here and there so that people can adjust to the idea of another sentient species on this planet on both sides, keeping it discreet enough so that history doesn't notice what we're doing until it's already a given…"  
  
"So… we're not trying to make a _big_ change all at once that would create a paradox, but we're just… working in a few tweaks that lead to the final picture changing later rather than trying to force the change all at once?"  
  
"Exactly!"  
  
"And you're _sure_ the Faction won't benefit from this?"  
  
"The Grandfather gains power by tearing history apart; if anything, we'll be making it more secure because some of humanity's more xenophobic empires won't get their feet off the ground any more!"  
  
"And… this won't do anything to those delicate moments of history you told me about?"  
  
"We're setting up an equally delicate chain of events; if we're careful, this _will_ work."  
  
For a moment, Amy stared at the Doctor in a probing manner, her arms folded as she looked the Time Lord up and down as though assessing him…  
  
"All right," Amy nodded at last, smiling at the Doctor. "Let's make history."  
  
As the young woman walked back to her seat at the table, the Doctor smiled in approval at his old student's response to the situation; she'd remembered his lessons, taken his usual arguments into account, and not accepted it until he could present a clear argument for why it was all right to make an exception to his usual rules in this instance.  
  
They might have come into each other's lives in an unconventional manner when he landed in her garden, but with every day, as the dynamics in the TARDIS adjusted to their new associates, the Doctor felt better about himself than he had since he'd lost Fitz and Compassion…  
  
"What were-?" Nasreen began.  
  
"Later," the Doctor said, placing a hand on Nasreen's shoulder to ensure she stayed in her chair.  
  
"Look, I understand that these… Silurians… were here first, but nobody on the surface is going to go for the idea of sharing the planet now; it's just too big a leap-!"  
  
"Then be extraordinary," the Doctor smiled at her, grateful when the geologist sat back down with a smile.  
  
 _She's tense, but she's willing to listen to what everyone else has to say; it's a good sign…_  
  
"OK," the Doctor continued, slapping the table as he looked between the three sitters. "Bringing things to order, the first meeting of representatives of the human race and homo reptilian is now in session. Ha! Never said that before, that's fab! Carry on! Come on, Mo, let's get you back to the surface."  
  
"You would-?" Malokeh began.  
  
"Nasreen and Amy have things under control here; it's best that Mo here gets back to his family," the Doctor said, looking pointedly at Malokeh. "I'll see about getting Ayala back to you while I'm at it, shall I?"  
  
"Of course," Malokeh nodded. "I am sure that Restac would… appreciate it."  
  
"Quite," the Doctor said; each of them were fully aware that it was unlikely that she would do anything of the sort, but this wasn't the time to focus on potential negatives.  
  
"You know," he grinned, glancing back at the conference table with a wistful grin, "humans and their predecessors, shooting the breeze; never thought I'd see it."  
  
He decided not to say anything more in case he jinxed his current luck, but so far this was the most positive talk he'd had with any Silurians prior to this (what he'd set up in the future during that conference had been promising, but that was more of a détente in anticipation of future developments).  
  
 _Still, so far all in order so far; Amy's setting up talks down here, Natalie and K9 are keeping an eye on things up there, and all I need to do is get everyone in one place and make sure we're all on the same page_ …

* * *

In hindsight, Amy supposed she should have known that things were going too well for them to solve something this big this easily. She was fully aware that Restac wasn't going to back down just because she'd been ordered by a superior, considering that this Silurian woman was a special kind of psycho, but after the woman had left the conference, she had hope that things were going well. The Doctor had gone off to touch base with Natalie and their other new associates on the surface, and while Nasreen had her doubts at first about the idea of introducing another species on top of humanity, once Amy had introduced the idea of giving the Silurians the areas that humanity couldn't live in and Eldane had suggested a trade of technology for space, Nasreen was looking at the other two at the table with an encouraging smile.  
  
"OK," the older woman said with a smile. "Now I'm starting to see this."  
  
"Nice," the Doctor's voice said, the Time Lord walking back into the room with Malokeh and Elliot alongside him. "Not bad for a first session; more similarities than differences, just as I've always argued."  
  
"All good with you?" Amy asked.  
  
"We've… spoken with everyone up top," Elliot said uncertainly. "They'll be coming down soon."  
  
"Turns out Malokeh has been keeping an eye on the human race for the last few centuries," the Doctor smiled, patting the Silurian scientist on the arm. "Don't entirely approve of abductions in the first place, but at least he treated them humanely enough."  
  
"Thank you, Doctor," Malokeh said, looking at the seemingly young man in a slightly bemused manner, before he took a small black device out of his pocket. "If you will give me a moment, something has… come up."  
  
"Of course," the Doctor nodded at the Silurian scientist as the man left the room, before turning back to the conference table. "And for the record, your core idea is good; both of your races require certain environmental conditions in order to exist in relative comfort, but it wouldn't take much for humanity to help the Silurians set up cities in the right areas once they've worked out the right resources…"  
  
"It would be… difficult… but it would not be impossible for us to adapt," Eldane acknowledged. "We would expect equal treatment, of course."  
  
"Just like we would," Amy smiled politely at the leader. "We'd agree that both of us have equal rights to this planet, so all we need to straighten out is exactly how many of your people we wake up at a time so that we can set up everything you'll need without… well, without overwhelming everyone at our end or pissing people off at yours."  
  
"Naturally," Eldane replied, giving Amy a half-smile.  
  
"Exactly!" the Doctor grinned. "It's like I've always said; set things up so that you all recognise that you need to talk about it rather than start-"  
  
"Ranting like Cobb?"  
  
" _Natalie_!" the Doctor grinned, turning around to give his daughter a quick hug as she walked into the room, only for his smile to falter as he stepped back to register her expression. "What happened?"  
  
"The Faction," Natalie said grimly.  
  
" _What_?" Amy stood up, looking anxiously at the Time Lord and his daughter. "They're here?"  
  
"The Faction?" Nasreen and Eldane asked almost simultaneously.  
  
"Long story short, they're a twisted cult who'd like nothing better than to make everything break just to see what it looks like afterwards," the Doctor explained solemnly, as Tony walked in, carrying a figure covered in an old blanket. "And I take it that they're the ones who did _this_."  
  
As Tony lay the body on the table, Eldane stood up and solemnly removed the blanket, revealing the still form of Ayala lying in front of him, a bloody wound in her chest. Amy gasped and held a hand over her mouth in sympathy, and even Nasreen was clearly upset at the sight for more than just the obvious practical reasons.  
  
"We didn't do this," Natalie said firmly. "I swear to you on everything I have and everything I believe in; we would _never_ have killed her."  
  
"And…" the Silurian leader said, looking from the body to Natalie with a tentative smile. "I believe you."  
  
"You do?" the Doctor smiled.  
  
"You would not have spent this long attempting to negotiate if you were intending to simply kill us," Eldane clarified. "Besides, I spoke with Malokeh on what he has witnessed of your people when he brought me here; your treatment of Earth is… flawed… but I am satisfied that most of that was due to ignorance, and your actions in what wars he has witnessed are… fundamentally commendable."  
  
"We were always in favour of the right people winning it?"  
  
"Quite," Eldane smiled at Amy's assessment.  
  
"Thanks," Natalie said, even as a glance at her father told the Doctor that things hadn't been as straightforward up on the surface as she was trying to convey; the Faction might have been the ones to kill Ayala, but there had been at least one close call before they got to this point…  
  
Further thought on that issue was cut short when Restac returned to the chamber, now accompanied by a small platoon of Silurian soldiers, who took up position around the room as Restac advanced towards the table.  
  
"My sister…" she said, letting out a prolonged wail before she turned to glare at the Time Lord. "And you would have us trust these apes, Doctor?"  
  
" _Restac_ ," the Doctor groaned, "stop thinking of everything as a nail just because you're used to wielding the hammer! This wasn't even _them_ -!"  
  
"Apes are apes."  
  
"And how would you feel if we started acting like you were just… _velociraptors_ or something?" Amy countered. "You can't just tar an entire species with a single brush-!"  
  
"You have shown me nothing I wish to bring down here," Restac said, raising her weapon to point at the assembled humans.  
  
"You just like shooting things, really, don't you?" the Doctor observed, looking pityingly at Restac before his eyes narrowed in resolution. "Then just remember this; when you declared war, _you_ declared it."  
  
Anticipating her father's instructions, Natalie kicked Restac's gun out of her hand with one swift move before leading Tony out of the lab, Nasreen accompanying Eldane as Amy hung slightly back, evidently wanting to keep an eye on the last of their group without getting caught in anything the Silurians might use on him. Stuck for better ideas, the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver, preying Silurian technology wasn't divergent enough between clans for this plan not to work, and aimed a quick sonic pulse at the nearest two soldiers, smiling in relief when their guns sparked just as he had intended.  
  
"This is a deadly weapon!" he yelled at Restac's other assembled warriors. "Stay back and nobody gets hurt!"  
  
He didn't expect that 'threat' to deter trained Silurian warriors for long, but it should be long enough for him to get the rest of his group to safety; right now, he had to assume that Malokeh had been incapacitated at the least, but that still gave future peace a chance if they could get Eldane to safety and somehow force Restac to stand down…  
  
"Get to the lab!" he yelled at his friends after they'd been running for a few moments. "I'll buy you time!"  
  
"I can-!"  
  
"Give Restac more evidence that we're just apes; I have a more high-tech solution that might just make her think! _Go_!"  
  
The Doctor made a mental note to apologise to Natalie about that description of her once they were all safe, considering that he hadn't thought of her as 'just' a soldier for a long time, but as Restac and her forces rounded the last corner, he had more immediate priorities.  
  
"Hold it or I use this!" he said, brandishing the screwdriver in as threatening a manner as possible. "You get one warning, and that was it! If there can be no deal, all of you go back into hibernation. This ends here!"  
  
"No!" Restac said firmly. "It ends with our victory!"  
  
"Like I said," the Doctor countered, disabling the last of Restac's guns as he glared at her. "One warning."  
  
With that done, he turned and resumed his pursuit of his other companions, ignoring the sound of footsteps behind him before he reached the lab, sealing the door behind him as soon as he entered it before turning to take in the rest of his allies. Eldane, to his credit, seemed to be in good shape for a Silurian of what the Doctor presumed was advanced years, Nasreen had come across as a strong woman during their earlier exploration of the city and was still keeping up that impression, and he knew that Natalie and Amy were capable, but it didn't take his various doctorates to know that Tony was not in good shape.  
  
"Tony Mack," he said, walking up to the older man now sitting on a chair. "Sweaty forehead, dilated pupils, what're you hiding?"  
  
In response, Tony opened his shirt to reveal what the Doctor presumed was the place where Ayala had originally struck him with her venom, now spreading through his body and turning his veins green under his skin.  
  
"Tony!" Nasreen said, looking at him in horror. "What happened?"  
  
"Ayala's sting," Tony replied as the Doctor scanned the wound with the screwdriver. "She said there's no cure. I'm dying, aren't I?"  
  
"You're not dying, you're mutating," the Doctor corrected briefly as he moved from his scan to the available Silurian computers, transferring the screwdriver's readings into them for ease of assessment. "The question is how to stop this…"  
  
"Malohek put us through some decontamination program thing earlier; could that do it?"  
  
" _Brilliant_!" the Doctor smiled at Amy, looking over to see that Eldane was already helping Tony into one of the chambers. "Problem now is getting back to the TARDIS once that's done and making sure Restac doesn't follow us up to keep this stupid fight going…"  
  
"I can assist with that," Eldane put in. "Toxic Fumigation; an emergency failsafe meant to protect my species from infection. A warning signal to occupy cryo-chambers. After that, citywide fumigation, by toxic gas. Then the city shuts down."  
  
"You could end up killing your own people," Amy pointed out.  
  
"Only the ones foolish enough to side with Restac," Eldane smiled solemnly, even as the warmth in his eyes made it clear that he appreciated Amy's concern.  
  
"Are you sure about this?" Natalie asked.  
  
"My priority is the survival of my race," Eldane said. "Earth isn't ready for us to return."  
  
"No… but it could be," the Doctor said, taking a moment to assess things before coming to his final decision. "So here's the deal; everybody listening? Eldane, you activate shutdown; I'll amend the system, set your alarm for a thousand years' time."  
  
"A thousand years to sort the planet?" Natalie asked with a smile. "That could work."  
  
"And humanity can make the necessary preparations, as legends, prophecies, religion, whatever seems appropriate," the Doctor finished, looking over at Nasreen and Tony. "You can make it clear that this planet is to be shared…"  
  
"But there is no time to heal your friend and initiate the fumigation process before Restac can rally enough forces to penetrate this lab," Eldane noted, looking over at Tony.  
  
"Then leave me," the older man said.  
  
"What?" the Doctor said, looking sharply at Tony. "But-"  
  
"My kids can pass on that message for you, Doctor," Tony said. "I go back up there as is, I'll end up some freak show; all this stuff is my only hope."  
  
"This is… a big decision," the Doctor looked solemnly at the other man. "Are you sure?"  
  
"I'm sure," Tony said with a solemn smile. "Just… tell Elliot I'll be with him, will you?"  
  
The Doctor could only nod in understanding as Eldane activated the fumigation system, an announcement over the base's internal broadcast system informing the Silurian troops of this new development while the Doctor deactivated the energy barrier on the surface. A quick glance at the lab's internal cameras confirmed that the majority of Restac's forces were withdrawing back to their chambers, giving the Doctor a moment to confirm that there was a straight path from here back to the TARDIS before he looked back at his allies.  
  
"Clear path!" he yelled. "Let's go!"  
  
"You three go," Nasreen cut in, moving to stand beside Tony. "I'll stay here."  
  
"What?" Amy asked.  
  
"We'll hibernate with them; me and Tony," Nasreen explained, moving to take his hand.  
  
"And I can be decontaminated when they wake up," Tony smiled. "All the time in the world."  
  
"But Nasreen, you'll-" the Doctor began.  
  
"No; this is perfect," Nasreen said, "I don't want to go. I've got what I was digging for; I can't leave when I've only just found it."  
  
For a moment, the Doctor simply looked at the woman who had come down to this underground city with him, putting so much on the line on so little evidence, until he sighed and smiled at her.  
  
"Good luck," he said.  
  
"I thought for a moment that our race and the humans…" Eldane sighed, even as he led Tony and Nasreen towards the cryo-chambers.  
  
"Never give up hope," the Doctor replied. "It didn't happen today; that doesn't mean it won't happen later."  
  
He had made some arrangements with other Silurian groups in his seventh incarnation, but every move he made to ensure peace between Earth's two native species had to be a good one.  
  
"Go," Eldane said firmly.  
  
With nothing else to say at the moment, the Doctor ran down the corridor after his companions, leaving the humans and Silurians to take the next step towards peace on their own merits.  
  
 _Gradual process, but every step towards peace is a step in the right direction…_  
  
He could just hear the sounds of gas being released somewhere else in the rest of the base, the sound reverberating through the halls even before it reached their part of the cavern, but it didn't take long for him, Amy and Natalie to reach the part of the base where he'd left the TARDIS.  
  
"Will it work?" Amy looked anxiously at the Doctor.  
  
"This plan has a chance," the Doctor said. "That's the best any of us can promise right now."  
  
"Let's go," Natalie said, smiling at him and Amy as she entered the TARDIS, followed by the young red-haired human. The Doctor was just about to follow when he saw a crack opening in the wall beside the TARDIS, prompting him to quickly close the door and lock it.  
  
He might trust Amy, and Natalie had a natural potential for understanding temporal paradoxes like this, but at the moment it was too dangerous to allow either of them to be exposed to something like this; Amy wouldn't have a chance if she made direct contact, and Natalie's untrained state made her a potential liability as well.  
  
 _Amy's bedroom, the_ Byzantium _, Uxaerius, acknowledged by the Faction but not their creation… rips in the universe, caused by some sort of space-time cataclysm… an explosion? What could create such a devastating explosion that it would crack the universe? And why did the Angels and Prisoner Zero suggest that I should know about it_?  
  
Before he could talk himself out of it, the Doctor wrapped a handkerchief around his right hand and reached into the crack, praying that his theory about shrapnel of the explosion would be correct. As he made contact with some small fragment of something, he fought down the pain caused by the crack before he finally pulled his hand out, falling to the ground as he took in the sensation of something smoking in his hand, some form of energy crackling around it.  
  
"Ouch…" the Doctor said, letting out a grim chuckle before his attention was drawn to the path he, Amy and Natalie had been using earlier. Noticing Restac walking into the chamber, the Doctor fought down the pain as he scrambled to his feet, shoving the object he'd just retrieved into his pocket with his right hand while opening the TARDIS door with his left. He heard Restac hurrying towards him, letting out a scream of rage, but the doors closed behind him before she could reach the ship.  
  
"What happ-?" Amy began, as she and Natalie looked anxiously at him.  
  
"Restac; we need to go!" the Doctor said, quickly setting the TARDIS into reverse; his right hand still smarted, but he hoped that the two women would assume that he was just trying for an impulsive random flourish so long as he didn't show the pain.  
  
Even as the ship returned to the surface, leaving Restac to be either suffocated by the fumigation process or to return to her cryo chamber before the fumigation reached dangerous levels, the Doctor knew that he had only achieved a partial victory here. The Faction had failed in their plans to trigger war between Earth's two native species today, but all he had done was sow some metaphorical seeds that may create a later opportunity for peace, and that last crack had left him with some worrying clues without any real answers. He'd done his best to pass on the required instructions to Mo, Elliot and Ambrose to arrange for the drill to be dismantled and make some kind of subtle preparations for the Silurians' later revival, but in the end, despite his hopes when he'd realised what he was dealing with, he really had very little to go on.

* * *

That evening, as the Doctor sat in his room and stared at the fragment of 'shrapnel' that so clearly resembled a piece of the TARDIS's exterior door, he only knew for sure that he couldn't share this discovery with Amy, Natalie or K9 until he had some kind of clear plan to deal with it.  
  
All he knew for certain was that, even if he didn't know what caused this to happen or why it would take place he was _not_ going to let his ship and oldest friend get blown up without a fight…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone's interested, the Doctor's thoughts on making arrangements with the Silurians in his seventh incarnation refers to the events of the audio "The Silurian Candidate"; having acquired the deed to Earth in an earlier trip, the Doctor visited 2085 and made a deal with a group of Silurians to come out of hibernation several centuries in the future after Earth has been devastated by solar flares (as depicted in "The Ark in Space"), thus allowing the Silurians to emerge and re-colonise Earth while humanity is returning to the planet to do the same, allowing both species to be on an equal footing as they try to make their mutual homeworld liveable once more


	34. Changes in November

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This begins a major 'mini-arc' of this series that will explore one of my favourite fictional concepts once this immediate crisis has been dealt with; hope you enjoy what's coming up…

"So," Natalie asked, looking pointedly at the Doctor as the four of them stood in the TARDIS console room, on their way to their next destination, her arms folded as she looked pointedly at her father, "would you care to explain why you introduced me to everyone there as your 'niece'? I thought you said you weren't ashamed of what I am-"

"It's not… it's just practicality," the Doctor said awkwardly. "Believe me, if we're in a society that can accept it or we meet people I know I can trust with the truth, I'll tell them that you're my daughter, but right now… well, I look more like your _brother_ than your father, so 'uncle' is just a good compromise to get the point across."

"He's right," Amy put in, looking reassuringly at Natalie. "After all, he could have had a much older sibling who had you; at least 'uncle' gives _some_ hint that he's the one with some kind of authority rather than making it too weird."

Natalie still didn't seem happy about it, but nodded in acceptance of the Doctor's decision, until the Doctor walked over to give her a quick hug.

"It has nothing to do with you," the Time Lord said, stepping back to give his daughter a brief smile. "If I could, I'd shout it from the rooftops that you're in my life, but… well…"

"Too dangerous and/or complicated," Amy finished for the Doctor, smiling at Natalie. "Just look at it this way; it's another little secret you've got from the rest of the universe."

"And that's a good thing?"

"Sometimes it's fun to imagine how everyone else would react if they knew what you were really about," Amy explained with a teasing smile. "I mean, it sucked when nobody took my stories about your dad seriously when I was growing up, but once he came back into my life and I understood the value of being quiet about something so incredible, well…"

"You liked the fun of the secret?"

"Bingo," Amy smiled. "Hey, I went from being the school outcast to travelling in a time machine with a robot dog and the last true Time Lords; what's not to like?"

"I'm not a-" Natalie began.

"You're getting there," Amy cut the seemingly younger woman off, smiling warmly at Natalie. She knew that the girl had a long way to go before she could truly be considered a Time Lord by the standards of Gallifreyan society, but as the only other surviving member of the Doctor's race, Amy felt that the girl merited the title by default if nothing else.

"Hold on…" Amy said, looking at the Doctor with a suddenly anxious expression. "Talking of secrets… should we be worried that the Faction gave up so easily?"

"Pardon?" the Doctor looked curiously at his companion.

"She makes a good point," Natalie put in. "Killing Ayala meant that we failed in our plans to create peace with the Silurians, but they could have done a lot more damage to our efforts if they wanted to trigger a war; why didn't they?"

"Ah, that," the Doctor nodded in understanding. "Good question, with a simple answer; they didn't think they'd need to."

"They didn't think they'd need to?" Natalie repeated in surprise.

"Oh, it's like the Doctor told me when we first talked about the Faction," Amy put in, nodding slightly as she turned over the memory in her mind. "Even the Grandfather doesn't really understand how the Doctor _thinks_ any more, so by extension, the rest of the Faction don't understand why other people would go for any option more sophisticated than breaking stuff."

"In other words, they gave the Silurians one good reason for war and felt that would be everything they needed?" Natalie nodded. "That… makes sense, I suppose."

"Good," the Doctor said, before turning his attention back to the TARDIS console. "Now then, where shall we-?"

There was a sudden shudder throughout the TARDIS, and then the time rotor began to move far more quickly than Amy could remember it ever moving before, the ship shaking around them as Natalie and Amy grabbed for the railings around the console while the Doctor grabbed the console itself.

"What's happening?" Amy asked, looking anxiously at her mentor as the Doctor moved around the console to study the monitor.

"The TARDIS has detected an anomaly in the Vortex!" the Doctor explained, anxiously flicking a few switches as he stared at the screen. "We're being drawn to it! Something's happened to history, and the old girl _really_ doesn't like it!"

"The Faction?" Natalie asked.

"No way to… know," the Doctor said, his tone shifting mid-sentence as the ship came to a halt, leaving the Time Lord to study the monitor in confusion. "London, Saturday 7 November, 1987; why would anyone want to change history _here_ …?"

"Nothing happened here that we should know about, right?"

"Not that I can remember off the top of my head," the Doctor confirmed thoughtfully. "But there has to be something… an anomaly like this has to have been caused by something specific…"

"What do you mean?" Amy asked.

"Whatever caused this anomaly, it was caused when somebody came back in time with a specific plan to change a specific event; this kind of temporal event couldn't be caused by someone just coming back in time and, to pick a drastic example, shooting people at random in case they killed someone important in the process."

"Good to know," Amy nodded.

"Good?"

"If it's a specific event, all we need to do is find what caused it and put things back to the way they were, right?" Natalie asked, choosing not to acknowledge the problem in finding that anomaly on a day where there was no way to know what someone had come here to change.

"Best plan we're going to get right now," the Doctor smiled, before crouching down to open a hatch in the floor of the console room, rummaging through the chest he found there for a few moments before picking up something that Amy could only think of as a hairdryer with blinking lights and a small green screen on it, topped by a small radar dish.

"What's that?" Natalie asked.

"Latest version of the rhondium sensor," the Doctor explained. "I've used older versions of this thing once or twice to track the presence of delta particles; if whoever caused this anomaly came here from another time, this should allow us to track down the point where they _entered_ this time, and from there, we can track where the time-traveller went afterwards."

"Cool," Amy smiled, indicating the doors. "Let's go."

"Affirmative," K9 noted.

"Not you, boy."

"Master?" the robot dog asked, looking up at the Doctor as he positioned a foot between K9 and the door.

"Sorry, K9, but we're already dealing with a potentially major temporal anomaly here; the scanner's a necessity, but I'm not going to risk compounding the anomaly by bringing fifty-first century technology into the twentieth when you aren't needed," the Doctor clarified. "Just… guard the TARDIS, all right?"

"Affirmative," K9 said again, his tone notably more subdued than his earlier comment, lowering his head sadly as the other three walked out of the ship.

"Was that necessary?" Amy looked at the Doctor. "We had to leave him on guard duty last time, and now he doesn't even get to leave the ship…"

"Any other situation I'd be carrying him around right now if I thought he'd help, but as I said, I'd prefer to limit the introduction of anachronistic technology to an already fragile timeline until I know what we're dealing with," the Doctor said briskly, the sensor raised in front of him as he studied its display. "I wouldn't even be using _this_ thing if we didn't need it… this way."

For the next few moments, Amy and Natalie simply followed the Doctor through the streets of London, Amy trying not to show too much surprise as she noticed so many little anomalies between this time and her own, ranging from a few chains that weren't open any more to shops proudly advertising massive radios and television sets that would have looked almost ridiculously antiquated back home. Eventually, the Doctor's urgent pace began to slow as they approached a large block of flats, a thoughtful expression on his face as he glanced between the scanner and the building before him.

"What?" Natalie asked, glancing over her father's shoulder to confirm that the scanner was indicating that the building in front of them was at least the current location of the particles he was tracking.

"Just…" the Doctor began, shaking his head uncertainly. "This place… this area… I think I've been here before…"

"This part of the city?" Amy asked.

"Not just that…" the Doctor said thoughtfully. "It's like… I've been _here_ before…this exact block of flats…"

He stared at the building for a few moments before shaking his head with a brief smile. "Probably not important; I've seen so much of London over the years, so what are the odds I'm here for the same reason, right?"

With those words, he continued walking, but Amy and Natalie both noticed the increasingly pensive expression on the Time Lord's face as he walked further up the stairs, his gaze shifting from pensive to apprehensive as he finally came to a halt in front of a particular flat.

"Oh no…" he said, raising a hand to knock on the door. After a moment's pause, the door opened, revealing a young blonde who Amy guessed to be about her age, hair pulled back in a casual ponytail, wearing a denim jacket over a pink hoodie and a pair of jeans.

"Hi," the girl said, looking awkwardly at the three strangers. "I'm-"

"Rose Tyler."

"What?" the now-named Rose said, looking at the Doctor in confusion. "How'd you-?"

"The more important question here is what _you're_ doing here," the Doctor interrupted her, walking into the flat with his companions behind him, glaring at Rose even as Natalie and Amy looked curiously at each other. "I admit that I'm sometimes not as good with human ages as I could be, and I wasn't in the best mental state back when I met you what with my brain being addled by everything it had been through recently, but I'm fairly sure you were _this_ age in 2005, which means that you couldn't be this age in _1987_ unless something _very_ strange was going on…"

"We… you know me?" Rose looked at the Doctor in confusion.

"I saved you from attacking Autons in the basement of Henrik's Department Store before I blew it up, you saved me from the Nestene Consciousness under the London Eye, I told you that the assembled hoards of Genghis Khan had tried and failed to get into my ship while we were being attacked by the dummy duplicate of your boyfriend…" The Doctor trailed off as he looked uncertainly at the young woman. "What was his name, remind me; Mickey or Rickey?"

"Mickey," Rose said, staring uncertainly at the Time Lord as her eyes began to widen in understanding. "Oh my God… _Doctor_?"

"And the bell rings with a resounding _Geronimo_ ," the Doctor said, smiling at Rose before his eyes narrowed into a stern glare. "Now then, normally I'm all for catching up with old friends, and I'd be delighted to clear up your obvious questions about why I'm no longer from the North or where I got all this hair, but the big question now is what you're doing _here_ -"

"Hello?" an unfamiliar voice said, the three new arrivals looking up to see an older man walking out of another part of the flat, wearing a shabby grey suit over a dark purple shirt, and had a receding hairline despite only being in his early thirties at best. "You know these people?"

"They're-"

"Doctor John Smith; I met Rose here a while ago when she gave me some assistance with a project, and thought I'd catch up when I saw her going into this flat earlier," the Doctor said, smiling politely at the other man as he held out his hand. "This is my niece, Natalie Kriener, and my assistant, Amelia Pond; you are?"

"Oh… Pete Tyler," the man said, shaking the offered hand as he awkwardly indicated the room behind him. "Sorry, but I've got a wedding to get to later…"

"Of course," the Doctor said, nodding at Pete as the seemingly older man closed the door behind him, leaving the Time Lord to turn and glare at Rose with a firm expression. "Now then, would you care to explain that?"

"Explain what?" Rose asked, in an awkward manner that made it clear she knew exactly what the Doctor was talking about.

"I will admit that it's probably been longer for me than it has been for you, but I distinctly recall that when I visited your flat during that Nestene invasion, it was just you and your mother in that place, and judging by the way your mother reacted to me I feel fairly safe assuming that your father wasn't in the picture by that point in time," the Doctor said.

"Hold on; her _mother_ hit on _you_?" Amy looked between the Doctor and Rose as she quickly put the pieces together, trying to do the sums in her mind while reminding herself that the Doctor must have been in a different body based on Rose's reaction to him.

"In defence of all concerned parties, I looked like I was in my early forties back then, and that's not important right now," the Doctor said, still glaring at Rose. "My point is, since I don't remember your father being a presence in your life in 2005, I feel safe assuming that your own presence in 1987, with him, has something to _do_ with him?"

"I…" Rose began, looking awkwardly at the Doctor for a moment before she waved her hands in frustration. "Look, it's not like I spent years planning something like this before I got this kind of shot! I was just… I was doing my best to sort out the funeral, and then this guy wearing bone showed up and told me he could send me somewhere I'd get my family back-!"

" _Bone_?" the three TARDIS travellers cut Rose off, each of them speaking the word essentially simultaneously as they processed the implications of that revelation.

"You made a deal with _Faction Paradox_?" Amy looked incredulously at the other young woman. "You _do_ know those people are the stuff of nightmares for a _reason_?"

"I didn't… look, I know they're bad news, but they let me save my dad!" Rose protested, looking between the three before her gaze fixed on the Doctor. "You just… showed up in my life and saved all those people, and then flew off without even asking me if there was anyone _I_ wanted to save; I just wanted to be there when he died, but then I realised that I could-"

"Rose, it doesn't _work_ like that," the Doctor cut her off, glaring angrily at the young woman. "Do you think I don't wish that I could go back and save people myself? Every time I leave somewhere in the TARDIS, I always end up wishing that there had been less deaths, that there was some way I could have saved more people, but there are _limits_!"

"it's not like I've changed history!" Rose protested. "Not much; I mean, he's never going to be a world leader, he's not going to start World War Three or anything!"

"Rose Tyler," the Doctor virtually growled as he walked up to stand directly in front of the young woman, "there is a man alive in the world who wasn't alive before. An ordinary man. That's the most important thing in creation; the whole world's different because he's alive."

"And because it was _your_ dad that _you_ saved, that make it all the more dangerous," Amy said, eyes narrowing as she looked at the young woman. "Because you changed your _actual_ history…"

"What?"

"Bending the rules when you don't know exactly what happened in history is one thing, but changing history that you know for a fact is something else," Amy clarified.

"And how do you know that?"

"The Doctor's been training me," Amy smiled. "I'm his student, and Natalie is his daughter; we _have_ to know these things."

" _Daughter_?" Rose looked at Natalie incredulously. "You-you're his _daughter_?"

"Long story," Natalie countered as she folded her arms and glared at Rose. "What matters is that this is _dangerous_ -"

"And we're leaving," the Doctor said, placing a hand on the girls' shoulders as he looked at Rose. "See you later, Miss Tyler."

Amy and Natalie looked sharply at the Doctor at that rapid change of topic, but there was nothing else they could say as he turned to lead them out of the flat, leaving Rose Tyler to look awkwardly after them.

"What are you doing?" Natalie looked sharply at her father. "You said that this was dangerous-"

"But I'd like some time to consider our options before this becomes more intense," the Doctor clarified, as they began to walk down the stairs.

"What?" Natalie asked.

"Because we know that there's a human element to this now," Amy looked solemnly at the Doctor, realising his train of thought. "If Rose Tyler created a paradox by saving her father's life…"

"Then the simplest way to resolve the paradox is to kill her father," the Doctor concluded.

Natalie didn't need to ask for more information after that. Even when she'd started out as a soldier, she'd instinctively been uncomfortable with the notion of trying to kill someone or something that wasn't actively trying to kill her first, and in this case Pete Tyler was clearly no threat to anyone.

He might potentially put time at risk just by living when he should be dead, but he had no intention of actually hurting anyone on purpose, and he actually seemed to be a good enough person based on that brief talk, so what was the Doctor going to do about this?


	35. Retreat to the Church

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To re-clarify, in this timeline, without the Time War and the Sisterhood of Karn to have an impact on the Doctor's regeneration 'pattern', the Eighth Doctor regenerated directly into the Ninth Doctor as portrayed by Christopher Ecclestone. Based on available evidence, I believe that Time Lords will 'naturally' regenerate into certain incarnations unless subject to some extreme external influence, as the short story 'The Touch of the Nurzah' and the audio 'Klein's Story' basically saw the Third and Seventh Doctors regenerate into their next incarnations far earlier than they were meant to, and yet they still regenerated into the familiar forms of the canon Fourth and Eighth Doctors when the time came (in 'Nurzah' the Doctor didn't fully regenerate because he was healed by an alien entity mid-regeneration, and in 'Klein's Story' the regeneration took place in an altered timeline that the alternate Eighth Doctor went on to erase).
> 
> The reason I bring this up is to confirm that the Doctor that met Rose and Jackie while tracking down the Autons was the Ninth Doctor as portrayed by Christopher Ecclestone, as, based on this theory, he's the Ninth Doctor the Eighth would have regenerated into if he'd regenerated without the 'aid' of the Sisterhood's potion; it's a minor detail, but I wanted to clarify it

With every step back to the TARDIS, the Doctor's mind whirled as he tried to work out his next move.

In so many other circumstances, he could have easily simply set out to find the original change and put everything back to normal, like that time Sir Shepstone hadn't made that announcement, but when it was a human life at stake…

The Grandfather might not understand how he would react in certain circumstances, but it was easy to predict how he would react when faced with this situation; it would take extreme circumstances for him to decide that it was best to kill an innocent man for any reason, and this was not one of them…

"How does she know?"

"What?" the Doctor looked back at Natalie, his train of thought broken by her question.

"How did Rose Tyler know about the Faction?" Natalie asked. "I mean, from what you've told me, the colonists on Uxaerius would have lost all memory of the Faction's involvement after you threw the cultists into that crack, but Nasreen's drilling team didn't seem to know anything about them…"

"Because you only referred to them as 'the Faction' in the presence of Nasreen's team; you might have gotten more of a reaction if you'd named them as 'Faction Paradox'," the Doctor clarified, even as he smiled briefly at his daughter's desire for answers. "Anyway, as to how _Rose_ knows about the Faction… like the rest of the human race at her point in time, she both knows a lot about them and doesn't know anything."

"What?"

"The Doctor told me about this when he was training me," Amy put in, taking up the explanation for herself. "After the Faction… well, after Gallifrey was destroyed… they couldn't blatantly change history because they didn't have any way of controlling their impact on the Web of Time at first, and even they aren't deranged enough to do something that would completely destroy the universe, but they went around history setting up a kind of… subtle propaganda campaign to spread their word?"

"It wasn't even that explicit," the Doctor clarified grimly. "From what I've picked up since Gallifrey was lost, after the Time Lords stopped being a factor, the Faction went around history, making occasional appearances at moments where they _knew_ that something bad was going to go wrong so that their agents would be referenced in any subsequent records of those events."

"They went to moments where they _knew_ something was going to go wrong?" Natalie looked at her father in confusion.

"As Pond said, at that point they would have still been working out their limitations and abilities now that the Time Lords weren't present to keep history in check," the Doctor clarified. "It would have been easier to visit points in history where something was already going to go wrong so that they could claim responsibility once it was over; they'd work on actually making things go wrong once they were more certain that they wouldn't just end up destroying it all because they were careless."

"Makes sense," Amy nodded grimly. "When they couldn't be sure what to do that won't set off the destruction of reality, they spent time building up their reputation so it would be easier to do it later."

"That… actually works as a strategy, I suppose," Natalie acknowledged. "So now they have the power to make smaller changes to history, and they're using Rose Tyler as… bait? Why her?"

"It makes it more personal," the Doctor mused grimly. "When I met Rose during a Nestene assault on London, back in the early days of my ninth body… if things had been better…"

"You might have asked her to travel with you?"

"Hard to be sure," the Doctor shrugged in response to Amy's question as the three of them finally reached the TARDIS. "I gave it some thought at the time, but how much of that was because I'd just regenerated and was still getting my new personality straight in my head?"

"It's been that-?" Natalie began, before the Doctor opened the TARDIS door and the three travellers found themselves staring at a simple wooden interior with no sign of the console room.

"What the-?" Amy began, before her eyes widened in horror. " _K9_!"

"What happened?" Natalie stared at the shrunken interior in horror. "And where's K9?"

"The temporal distortion," the Doctor said, staring at the blue box that had once been his ship in horror, slumping his head against the wall in despair. "We must have landed here just a few moments before Rose's actions explicitly changed history; once that happened, the resulting temporal shockwave must have severed the TARDIS's link to its interior dimensions…"

"And what about K9?"

"Well… he _should_ be all right," the Doctor said, hoping he sounded more confident of that than he felt. "The wound in time created by Rose saving her dad should just have disrupted the TARDIS's connection to the interior dimensions; theoretically, K9 might not even be aware there's a problem unless he tries to get out and finds he can't leave…"

He paused for a moment and then flexed his shoulders in resolution. "We need to find Rose and her dad; that's the only way we're going to solve this."

"How?"

"I'll work on that before we get there."

"And where is 'there'?"

"St Christopher's church," the Doctor replied. "I saw an invitation in the Tylers' flat."

"Ah," Natalie said. "Is that significant?"

"No, just where Pete Tyler was going to be the day he died."

"Right," Amy said, as she and Natalie walked briskly after the Doctor. "So… any ideas why they chose Rose for this trap? I mean, I don't remember you mentioning her before…"

"She wasn't a companion, if that's what you're asking," the Doctor said, his tone grim. "I met her when I was… it was my first regeneration after everything happened, and I was still disorientated… I ended up tracking down the Nestene Consciousness when it fled to Earth after a Faction raid damaged one of its feeding planets."

"The Nestene Consciousness?" Natalie asked.

"Some kind of living plastic that uses other plastic objects as its servants and weapons," Amy put in. "You met it when you were… it was the first threat you faced in your third body, right?"

"Bingo, Pond; good memory," the Doctor smiled at her before he resumed his more solemn expression. "Anyway, I ran into Rose when I tracked a large group of Autons to the department store where she worked, met up with her again the next morning when I was tracking an Auton arm that ended up in her bag, and then ended up taking her into the TARDIS to save her from an Auton that had replaced her boyfriend to try and find out more about me."

"Huh," Amy said. "And that made her stick in your mind?"

"Actually, what made her stick was the part where she saved my life from the Nestene Consciousness when the Autons were about to throw me into it," the Doctor clarified. "Like I said, I might have been willing to ask her along if I was in a better state, but… well, like I said, I wasn't in a very good place back then."

"And she made that much of an impression on you?" Natalie asked.

"Early days of regeneration; the people you meet early on in your life always have a profound impact on your new self," the Doctor explained. "That's part of the reason I stayed with Pond; she was literally the first face this face saw."

"Really?" Amy looked at him with a smile before she shook her head. "OK, so we're all clear on what we're dealing with; let's just get to this church, find out what's up with the Tylers, and work out where to go from there."

"Probably for the… best…" the Doctor said, voice trailing off as he looked upwards. "Oh no…"

For a moment, as the other two followed the Doctor's gaze, they couldn't see what had attracted his interest, but then their eyes fell on a large black creature that put Amy in mind of a dragon, and immediately dived into action as they ran after him. For a moment, neither young woman knew exactly where the Doctor was going or what those black creatures signified, but as soon as they spotted a church spire a short distance away they picked up the pace and followed him. The developing theory was proven correct when they rounded a corner and saw Rose standing awkwardly between her father and a woman in a pale pink dress with blonde hair who was likely Rose's mother, particularly when the woman was holding a baby.

" _Get in the church_!" the Doctor yelled, waving his urgent hands at the assembled guests as one of the creatures appeared in the air and dived down like a demonic bat. The Doctor left over just in time to knock Rose to the ground, protecting her from the creature's attempt to grab her in its talons.

"What the-?" Rose's apparent mother said.

"Everyone _get in the church_!" Amy yelled, as she and Natalie joined the group, Natalie practically marching the nearest civilians into the church while Amy anxiously assessed their surroundings. Trying to ignore the screams, Amy kept her attention focused on the Doctor as he helped Rose to her feet before leading her and her parents into the building, leaving Amy to quickly lead the pregnant bride and shaken groom to safety as the bat-thing enveloped the vicar and he vanished in a burst of light.

"What _are_ those things?" Rose asked, looking desperately at the Doctor as he shut the church doors behind her.

"Temporally-active 'antibodies' trying to sterilise the wound you inflicted on the web of time," the Doctor said, as he assessed the church interior. "These old windows and doors should keep them out long enough for me to work something out; whatever they are, they're basically animals, so they're not going to try too hard to get in here when there are easier targets outside…"

"What?" the woman who was apparently Rose's mother said. "What are you jabbering about?"

"I don't have _time_ for this, Jackie; we have _bigger problems_ right now!" the Doctor glared back at the older woman. "I am trying to save everyone here from the consequences of a catastrophic accident caused by a young woman with good intentions and _no idea_ what she was doing, and I am trying to do it _without_ letting anyone else die, so don't ask me any more questions and _check the doors_!"

"…Right," Jackie said, nodding awkwardly at the seemingly young man as she turned around to follow his instructions.

"Oh God…" Rose said, looking at the Doctor as he turned back to talk with the groom before she turned to look at Natalie and Amy. "Is it… things are that bad?"

"Time's been damaged and we have dragon-things trying to clean up; did you seriously think things would be _easy_?" Amy glared.

"Considering that we're talking to the person who thought it was a 'good idea' to take an offer from a psychopathic death cult who have a thing for paradoxes?" Natalie put in, glaring over at Rose. "I wouldn't put it past her."

"Hey!" Rose protested. "I didn't _want_ any of this; just because I didn't know-"

"That's the problem; you didn't even _think_ about it," Natalie said grimly, grabbing Rose's wrist and dragging her into a small room off to the side of the church, Amy walking quickly after the two women. "Honestly, you people get access to time travel and it's all about what that can do for _you_ , without thinking about the costs of it all."

"Well… y'know, in Rose's defence, we'd all think about what we want to change in this kind of situation-" Amy began, feeling obligated to defend the girl.

"But would _you_ make a deal with Faction Paradox?" Natalie glared over at her friend.

"Uh… OK, fair point, but I _do_ know a lot more about them than she does…"

"She should know enough to know that's not a good idea."

"Hey!" Rose yelled at the young Gallifreyian indignantly. "I already said that I'm sorry here; it's not my fault-"

"That you're an emotional idiot?" Natalie spat at Rose. "You're putting us in an impossible situation because you didn't think-!"

"I just wanted to save my dad-!"

"YOU'RE NOT WORTH IT!" Natalie yelled at Rose, grabbing Rose by the shirt and slamming her against the wall, the would-have-been soldier's whole body shaking as she glared at the woman whose actions had put them in this position. " _My dad_ sacrificed his entire _planet_ because he thought it was the only way to stop the Faction… his closest friends gave their lives because they believed he could defeat them even after he did everything wrong… it took him two _lifetimes_ before he felt secure enough to let someone new into his life after what they put him through… and because _you_ felt sorry for yourself, he's going to have to compromise something he's held on to when he lost everything else that mattered."

"I didn't ask-"

"You didn't _think_ ," Natalie said once again, releasing her grip on Rose's jacket with a cold glare. "And just thank whatever you want to thank that you're not worth killing either."

Looking at Natalie in that moment, Amy was suddenly acutely aware that her fellow TARDIS traveller was a genetically programmed soldier. The Doctor was doing his best to show his daughter another way, but faced with a situation like this, Amy had to admit that a part of her could appreciate the other woman's point of view.

The loss of Gallifrey still defined the Doctor's life no matter how much he seemed to have improved since those dark days when he had crash-landed in her garden, and that had just made it all the more important to him that he uphold the Laws that his people had guarded when they were around… and now, whatever way she looked at it, the Doctor would have to compromise _something_ to resolve the paradox of Pete Tyler.


	36. Family in the Church

"They're not that close."

"Mmm?" the Doctor looked at Rose, unusually silent as he paced the church, occasionally glancing out of the windows at where the dragon-things- which he had identified as 'Reapers'; if he remembered his higher-dimensional species correctly, they were essentially the equivalent of monkeys for the Chronovores- still flew around London.

"My mum and dad," Rose said awkwardly. "I mean, back when I was growing up, she always told me Dad was this brilliant aspiring businessman, selling drinks, working on solar power, wanting to go travelling… and now he's alive, and she called him an accident waiting to happen, there was all this stuff about him getting caught with a cloakroom attendant, she says he just brings home 'rubbish'…"

"We all romanticise and idealise the dead," the Doctor said grimly, taking care not to pay attention to the beige car outside the church that appeared and vanished around one specific corner. "It's easier to remember the good days… because the bad days are what we're grateful we don't have to deal with any more."

"Oh," Rose said uncertainly. "You've…?"

"I've been there," the Doctor affirmed grimly. "It's the burden of owning a time machine; you can have the chance to see so many moments of your past, but at the same time you have to be constantly aware that you can't affect any of them, and the people you've lost are just _lost_ no matter how much you wish you could have it. You can either romanticise their memory to focus on keeping the good memories alive, or focus on the negatives to help yourself feel better about it, and the second just makes you more bitter."

"You've got a time-?" Rose began, before she shook her head in frustration. "Of course you do; how else could you be here and _still_ know about me?"

"I just didn't bother to mention it the first time around," the Doctor clarified, guessing what the young woman was about to ask as he took out the screwdriver to briefly wave it around the large hall. "I was… not in a good place."

"I can guess it," Rose smiled slightly. "I mean… no offence, but you looked a bit older back then…"

"It varies," the Doctor shrugged, recalling the oh-so-short life he'd lived in his ninth body; compared to some of his incarnations, it sometimes felt like that man had barely even lived a full life by human standards, never mind how long a Time Lord could live without regenerating if they had a calmer lifestyle than his own. "Whenever I regenerate, I normally get a younger body than the previous one, although the mentality at the time I change can be a factor in what's coming; you knew me… two bodies ago, if I remember correctly."

"Two?" Rose looked at him in surprise. "You've died twice since we met?"

"Things happened," the Doctor said, grimly remembering those last two grim regenerations, giving his lives to save those who had become caught up in his pointless conflict with the Faction's agents at a time when he was still denying his ability to do anything to them.

"I'm… I'm sorry," Rose said at last, looking uncomfortably at him.

"It was a while ago-" the Doctor began.

"I _mean_ …" Rose cut him off, taking a deep breath before looking at him with a new sense of resolution. "I'm sorry… for everything."

"It's… not _entirely_ your fault," the Doctor conceded, understanding her appeal and accepting it in the spirit it was intended. "You made a bad call, but you didn't know any better…"

Lost for anything else to say to that, Rose just turned around and walked away. Noting that she was heading to the same area that Pete had gone to earlier, the Doctor thought about going after her, but the sound of something attacking a side-door prompted the Doctor to check out that possible entrance, pushing back a curtain to reveal the small side-door.

 _Even if she talks to her dad right now, it's not like she can make this situation_ more _temporally complicated_ …

Maybe it was short-sighted, but he had to prioritise the situation facing him right now; the question of whether or not Rose was going to reveal her identity to her father hardly mattered on top of everything she'd done to the timeline already.

Besides… while he was still working out how he was going to resolve the current paradox, the Doctor saw no sense in begrudging Rose the chance to have some kind of honest talk with her father.

"Excuse me, Mr…" a voice said, the Doctor glancing around to see the bride and groom walking towards him, the groom wearing a grey suit that he clearly wasn't entirely comfortable in while the bride was obviously a few months pregnant

"Doctor," the Doctor corrected, taking one last scan of the door with the sonic.

"You seem to know what's going on," the groom said, his tone rushed but comparatively controlled for the circumstances.

"I do what I can," the Doctor conceded, smiling briefly at the young couple.

"I just wanted to ask…" the man continued.

"Can you save us?" the bride finished, looking tearfully at him.

"Who are you?" the Doctor asked, moving away from the door to address them directly.

"Stuart Hoskins," the groom said.

"Sarah Clark," the bride added.

"And one extra," the Doctor smiled down at Sarah's pregnant belly. "Boy or girl?"

"I don't know," Sarah said, stroking it with a sad smile. "I don't want to know, really."

"How did this all get started?"

"Outside the Beatbox Club, two in the morning," Stuart said.

"Street corner," Sarah continued. "I'd lost my purse, didn't have money for a taxi."

"I took her home," Stuart said, smiling at the memory.

"Then asked her out?" the Doctor asked.

"Wrote his number on the back of my hand," Sarah smiled.

"Never got rid of her since," Stuart said with a satisfied smile. "My dad said…"

The way his voice trailed off, coupled with the way Sarah reached out to squeeze his hand, suggested to the Doctor that Stuart's father had been taken by the Reapers before he'd arrived on the scene. It was a further personal tragedy on an already difficult day, but there was nothing he could do about that right now.

"I don't know what this is all about," Sarah said, turning back to face the Doctor, "and I know we're not important-"

"Not important?" the Doctor cut Sarah off, looking at her with a warm smile. "Life shouldn't measure importance based on what's considered important to other people; it should be based on what's important to _you_. Street corner, two in the morning, getting a taxi home… I've been all over the universe, but I've never been able to live a life like that."

He'd tried to do it long ago when he'd first come to Coal Hill with Susan, but ever since his third incarnation's exile had ended and he'd regenerated into his fourth body, he'd realised that he couldn't stay in one place any more; his third incarnation had become comfortable at UNIT, but none of his other bodies had ever been able to find the incentive to stay somewhere on their own, despite such moments as his fifth self's time managing the _Tempus Fugit_. He had done his best to ignore his wanderlust so that he could be there for Amy while she was growing up, and he liked to think he'd pulled it off, but he'd still been able to go off on a few quick jaunts when time allowed and he was sure Amy would be safe…

He couldn't do it himself, but that didn't mean he couldn't give others that chance.

"I'll try and save you," he said, smiling between the couple. "Be sure of that."

"Doctor?" Amy called out from another part of the church, prompting the Doctor to give the couple one last reassuring smile before he hurried over to where his companion was sitting with his daughter.

"Problem?" he looked between the two women with a brief smile.

"Rose is talking to her dad," Natalie said.

"I noticed."

"You noticed?" Amy repeated, looking at him sceptically. "I get that I'm still basically the amateur in matters of temporal mechanics of the three of us, but isn't that a bit risky right now?"

"To be blunt, Pond, at this point the timeline's so full of cracks that one isn't going to sway the situation one way or the other," the Doctor said, rolling his eyes as he looked up at the ceiling in frustration. "Either we solve this problem and it doesn't matter what Pete Tyler knows about his future as it will either be irrelevant in the new timeline we've created or he'll be dead, or we don't solve it and he's deader than he would have been."

"…How can someone be dead _er_?" Amy asked, looking at her friend in confusion. "You can't just be a _bit_ dead-"

"He means Pete Tyler and everyone else will have been erased by those Reaper things," Natalie cut in, looking at her father with an edge to her expression that the Doctor didn't like. "So why aren't we just-?"

"That is _not_ an option, Natalie," the Doctor countered. "Pete Tyler is _innocent_ -"

"And what about all the other people who are going to die if this anomaly isn't stopped?" his daughter countered. "Dad, I get that you don't want to kill anyone, and I admire that most of the time, but don't we have a duty-?"

"We don't have the _right_ to make that kind of choice, Natalie," the Doctor cut her off firmly. "Pete Tyler is an innocent victim of this situation; he didn't choose to be the catalyst for this mess, and he _definitely_ doesn't deserve to die just because it's easier to do things that way."

"I get that you don't _want_ to do it that way, Dad, but what if there _isn't_ another way?"

"We are _not_ the very powerful or the very stupid, Natalie, and we will not set ourselves as one and start acting like the other," the Doctor said firmly. "If we start assuming there's only one solution, we blind ourselves to the possibility that there _will_ be other ways; right now, the priority is to make sure things don't get worse until I can find that alternative."

"How could they?" Amy asked. "You just said Rose talking to her dad isn't a problem-"

"But that leaves the risk of her coming into contact with herself," the Doctor finished, looking over at where Jackie Tyler was currently holding her baby and looking anxiously around herself. "Amy, keep a discreet eye on Jackie and that baby; if Rose so much as touches that child…"

"Are we talking _Timecop_ here?"

" _Timecop_?" Natalie repeated.

"Time-travel film in the 1990s," the Doctor explained, recalling those early days of Amy's training when he'd sat down with her to watch all kinds of time-travel movies to get a better sense of her cultural expectations so that he could change them accordingly. "Actually, it wouldn't be quite that visually disgusting; Rose wouldn't _merge_ with her infant self, but… well, one time a friend of mine was in the same place and time as his past self from six years ago, and the temporal energy released when they just touched each other's fingers was the equivalent of me dying eight times at once."

"That… sounds painful," Natalie nodded uncertainly.

"To say nothing of risky with those things out there," the Doctor nodded, turning back to Amy. "As I said, Pond; keep the Roses apart, and that should limit any further temporal disturbances while I work on what to do next."

"Check," Amy nodded, hurrying over to discreetly stand close to Jackie even as Rose's mother ran after a young dark-skinned boy in a tuxedo, who was now heading for a corner of the church.

"OK," Natalie said, looking curiously at her father. "So… what's the plan for stopping these things?"

"Still working on it," the Doctor said, shaking his head as he studied the church. "This church might be one of the last places left standing with people inside it on Earth, and it's not old enough to keep those Reapers out indefinitely. Without the Time Lords to sustain or undo the temporal paradox, I just don't have the resources to get it all in order, especially not without the old girl…"

Sighing in frustration, the Doctor sat down in a nearby pew and stared grimly up at the ceiling, before he sat sharply up, one hand reaching into his jacket to pull out a key and a whistle, each glowing with a strange golden energy.

"Is that…?" Natalie looked at her father's hands in apprehension.

"The TARDIS key and K9's whistle," the Doctor confirmed with a grin. "They're still trying to get through…"

* * *

"…The inside of my ship was thrown out of the wound," the Doctor concluded his hurried explanation from the pulpit of the church, holding the glowing key in the sleeve of his jacket, the remaining residents awkwardly sitting before him, looking at him in that manner he'd come to recognise represented people who weren't entirely sure what he was saying even if they were going along with his authority because they had no better ideas. "These objects represent a link to that interior; if anyone has some kind of power source, I can boost that link and restore my ship, which should allow me to fix all this. Does anyone have some kind of battery?"  
  
"Would this do?" Stuart asked, standing up after a moment's thought and walking up to the pulpit to pass the Doctor a clunky mobile phone.  
  
" _Perfect_ ," the Doctor smiled, walking down from the pulpit to take the phone and open the back, turning the screwdriver on the now-extracted clunky black battery. "Just give me a bit of time to charge this up, and we'll be on our way."  
  
This was going to take a while, but since he couldn't use the sonic screwdriver's power source to do this without depriving himself of a vital tool, he had to adapt to contemporary technology and hope that would be enough…

* * *

"…never said why you came here in the first place," Natalie heard Pete saying as she wandered through the church. The father and daughter were currently sitting at the back of the church, away from the other would-have-been wedding guests, and Natalie had volunteered to assess the area while Amy and the Doctor waited by the glowing key. "If I had a time machine, I wouldn't have thought 1987 was anything special. Not round here, anyway."  
  
"We just… ended up here," Rose said. From her position behind a pillar, Natalie wondered at the way Rose phrased that but decided not to worry about it; interrupting to correct a lie wouldn't help anybody, and now that she was hidden from view, she wanted to get a better feel for Rose as a person.  
  
"Lucky for me, eh?" Pete smiled. "If you hadn't been there to save me…"  
  
"That was just a coincidence," Rose cut him off. "That was just really good luck. It's amazing."  
  
"So," Pete said, looking uncertainly at his daughter, "in the future, are me and her indoors still together?"  
  
"Yeah," Rose replied with a smile.  
  
"Are you still living with us?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Am I a good dad?"  
  
It was strange; Natalie had spent the last few hours hating Rose for the position the young woman had put her own father in, but listening to the Faction's pawn talking right now, it was almost easier to forget why she was angry at this girl who'd made such a foolish decision… who had put all of time at risk out of her own selfish desires… who genuinely hadn't know any better when she'd accepted the deal…  
  
"You…" Rose said, looking between her father and some distant future. "You told me a bedtime story every night when I was small. You were always there. You never missed one. And, er… you took us for picnics in the country every Saturday. You never let us down. You were there for us all the time. Someone I could really rely on."  
  
Natalie clearly heard Pete state that he didn't actually recognise that description of himself, which reinforced Natalie's idea that Rose was just thinking of what she'd always imagined life would be like with her father, but that detail almost wasn't important right now.  
  
Listening to what Rose had _wanted_ to experience with her father… it left Natalie wishing she'd had a chance to experience that kind of life herself.  
  
Granted, she'd never even had _any_ kind of childhood, considering the circumstances of her 'birth', and she understood that her father wasn't to blame for that shortcoming, but still…  
  
She'd never have existed if it wasn't for the unique circumstances of her creation, but that creation had deprived her of so many opportunities so many other people took for granted…  
  
 _And if we put everything back to normal, I'll be taking those chances away from Rose_.


	37. The Second Death of Pete Tyler

"So," Rose asked, sitting beside the Doctor, Amy and Natalie near the back of the church, as the TARDIS's golden outline continued to become more solid at the front,

"when time gets… sorted out…?"

"Everybody here forgets what happened," the Doctor said solemnly. "And everything stays the same as it is now."

"In other words, I'll still be alive," Pete put in, his tone bitter as he glanced at Rose from the seat behind her, her silence answering Pete's question more than anything she could have said. "That's why you didn't have anything to tell me about my life; I never did anything."

"Just because you haven't done anything doesn't mean you don't _mean_ anything-" the Doctor began.

"Rubbish," Pete countered bitterly. "I'm so useless I couldn't even die properly. Now it's my fault all of this has happened."

"This is my fault…" Rose said, leaning back to place a hand on his arm.

"No, love," Pete said, looking at Rose with a sense of solemn sorrow that served as a sharp contrast to his earlier bitterness. "I'm your dad. That's my job for it to be my fault."

"Her dad?" Jackie said, the four looking up to see Rose's mother standing over them, staring between Pete and Rose incredulously. "How are you her dad?"

"Oh no…" Amy whispered, exchanging anxious glances with Natalie.

"How old were you?" Jackie continued, still glaring at Pete as the Doctor leaned forward to try and avoid this inevitably awkward conversation. "Twelve? Oh, that's disgusting."

"Jacks, listen," Pete began, quickly getting to his feet. "This is Rose-"

"Rose?" Jackie cut him off. "How sick is that? You give my daughter a second-hand name? How many are there? Do you call them _all_ Rose?"

"Oh, for God's sake, look," Pete said, reaching out to take the baby from Jackie's arms. "It's the same Rose!"

" _NO_!" the Doctor, Natalie and Amy yelled, all three leaping to their feet just as Rose found herself holding the infant. Natalie grabbed the baby out of Rose's arms as the girl stared at her younger self in shock, but the bright flash that had filled the room as the two Roses made contact made it clear that it was already too late. As the three temporally-displaced women looked up, one of the Reapers appeared, floating in the middle of the central hall with its wings folded loosely around itself like a bat, spreading its wings as it let out a chuckling sound.

"Everyone behind me!" the Doctor yelled

"No-!" Amy began, looking at her friend in horror.

"I'm the oldest thing here," the Doctor said, the finality in his tone as he stared solemnly at the Reaper leaving no room for argument.

As the Doctor walked forward, Amy didn't know what to do; she couldn't let the Doctor die, but he'd said himself that he was the oldest thing inside this church, Natalie was obviously too young for them to be sure she could hold this thing back even if Amy and the Doctor would let his daughter do that…

Her mind was racing so rapidly that Amy almost missed it when the Reaper dived down to envelop the Doctor, the two aliens coming together in a brilliant flash of light that faded to reveal no trace of either. Spinning around, Amy saw the golden TARDIS outline vanish before it could finish solidifying, the young girl running over to pick up the fallen key and K9's discarded whistle.

"It's cold," she said, turning around to stare at Natalie as the Doctor's daughter hurried over to join her fellow TARDIS traveller, the infant Rose having been handed back to her mother. "The key's cold… it's not linked to the TARDIS…"

"Which means it's not linked to Dad," Natalie said, turning to glare at Rose. "Which means he's dead… _because of you_."

"What…?" Rose said, looking shakily at Natalie. "But… I'm sorry about-"

" _He did this for you_!" Natalie yelled, moving so quickly Amy could barely see the motion, as the engineered solider moved from standing beside Amy to pressing Rose against a column in the church, the young woman showing more rage than Amy had ever seen from Natalie. "The Faction gave you this chance because they knew that you had met Dad; if you had been anyone else, he'd have dealt with this the moment it _started_ -!"

"He wouldn't."

" _He would_!" Natalie turned to yell at Amy, tears prickling in eyes that Amy would have sworn before this couldn't cry. "He just did this because-!"

"Because he's the Doctor," Amy said, fighting down the urge to cry herself as she looked at Natalie, understanding the reason for the soldier's grief even if she couldn't control it. "He put more effort into this because he knew Rose… but he'd never be that ruthless, and you know it."

Natalie simply stared at Amy for a few moments, before she simply threw her arms around the other girl and began to sob, Amy unable to do more than wrap her arms around Natalie and give the young woman a squeeze.

She knew that Natalie looked like the older one of the two of them, and she still wasn't sure how much time had passed for Natalie before they found her on Uxaerius after her 'birth', but in a strange way, at least for the moment, Amy felt like a mother trying to comfort her daughter.

It was crazy to imagine that Natalie needed any kind of parent when she was a trained soldier, but after spending the last few weeks seeing Natalie with the Doctor, it was clear that the girl needed emotional support to face the wider universe, even if she could handle herself physically against anything that tried to attack her.

After Amy had helped Natalie into a seat by the door of the church, the two women sat in silence, Amy alternating between looking at the TARDIS key in her hand and the young woman sitting alongside her, lost for what she could do in this mess of a situation.

She'd come so far since those days when she'd been sent to psychiatrists because they thought she was crazy or paranoid, but this wasn't like trying to outwit the Faction's latest schemes; time had been broken because of one act of kindness, and she couldn't bring herself to put it right…

"That Doctor fellow…" Pete's voice said, Amy looking up to see the man looking solemnly at her. "He cared for Rose, didn't he?"

"She… was there for him at an important time of his life," Amy said; talking about regeneration and what little the Doctor had shared about that time of his life would be too complicated, but she could give Pete the bare facts. "He tries to save everyone, but… Rose meant a little more to him than that."

"Which is why he didn't want her to go through this again if there was another way," Pete said, his tone increasingly solemn once again. "Now there isn't."

"…What?" Natalie looked up at Pete, as Rose got up from her seat and walked over to join them.

"The car that should have killed me," Pete explained, looking over at Rose as he shrugged on his jacket. "It's here. The Doctor worked it out way back, but he, er… he tried to protect me. Still, he's not in charge anymore. I am."

Amy saw no sense protesting that; she and Natalie weren't in any state to try and establish their own authority in this situation, and even if she was fairly sure she knew what Pete was about to say, she didn't have the strength to protest about it.

Maybe that made her a bad person, but this was the Doctor's life they were talking about here; if there was any way to get him back…

"But you can't," Rose said, tears in her eyes.

"Who am I, love?" Pete said, reaching out with one hand to caress Rose's cheek.

"My daddy…" Rose said, sounding so much like a little girl even Amy felt like giving her a hug.

"Jackie," Pete said, looking over at his wife as the other woman walked over to join us. "Look at her; she's ours."

"Oh, of course," Jackie said after staring at Rose for a moment, moving to hug the weeping Rose, Rose's sobs becoming more intense as she wrapped her arms around her mother.

"I'm meant to be dead, Jacks," Pete said, smiling as the two women ended their hug. "You're going to get rid of me at last."

"Don't say that," Jackie said.

"For once in your life, trust me; it's got to be done," Pete smiled tremulously. "You've got to survive, because you've got to bring up our daughter."

With that 'instruction' given, Pete shared one final kiss with his wife before he turned back to Rose. "I never read you those bedtime stories. I never took you on those picnics. I was never there for you."

"You would have been," Rose said, still tearful even as she seemed to accept the situation (Amy noticed Natalie tensed for action, but didn't bother to criticise her fellow traveller; the situation was too high-stakes for them not to be cautious right now).

"But I can do this for you," Pete nodded firmly. "I can be a proper dad to you now."

"But it's not fair," Rose said, sniffing sadly.

"Any more fair that she loses her dad so a useless lump like me can keep going?" Pete said, indicating Natalie with a sympathetic smile.

"He wouldn't-!" Natalie looked up urgently, only to bow her head when she realised what she was about to say.

"And that's why I'm doing this for him," Pete said, smiling briefly at Natalie before he looked at Rose with a broader, yet sadder smile. "I've had all these extra hours; no one else in the world has ever had that. And on top of that, I got to see you… and you're beautiful. How lucky am I, eh? So come on; do as your dad says."

On some unspoken understanding, Rose reached over to pick up a wrapped vase from a nearby chair and pass it on to Pete.

"You going to be there for me, love?" Pete said, waiting for Rose to nod in response. "Thanks for saving me."

With those last words, Pete picked up the vase and ran out of the church, Amy, Rose and Natalie hurrying after him to take up position around the door. Reapers could be heard gathered above the church, and Amy saw one appear on the other side of the street, but then Pete was running towards the end of the street, and a beige car suddenly appeared in front of him…

At the sound of something hitting the car, the Reaper that had been charging towards Pete suddenly vanished in a brief burst of gold, and then it was as though the sun had come out from behind a cloud. The day was suddenly normal, the church behind them sounded like it was full of people once again, the faint sounds of life in the city could be heard if Amy strained her ears…

"Go to him," the Doctor's voice suddenly said, the Time Lord appearing from behind the three women, his gaze fixed on Rose even as his hands went to Amy and Natalie's shoulders. As the younger blonde ran towards her father, the redhead and his daughter wrapped their arms around the returned Time Lord, the small trio moving away from the church doors to a position up against the wall around a corner, eyes squeezed shut as they all fought the urge to laugh for joy at this turn of events.

"So…" Amy said, as she finally pulled away to look at the Doctor. "If you… you're back, then that means…?"

"History's back on track," the Doctor confirmed, indicating where Rose was now sitting on the ground alongside her father while the driver of the car that had hit him stared in horror at what had happened. "As far as the rest of the universe is concerned, Pete Tyler missed getting hit by that driver earlier while he was purchasing a wedding gift, only to get hit by that same driver by sheer coincidence while he was coming to the wedding."

"Nobody remembers us?" Natalie asked, indicating the people now filing out of the church, including a couple of figures Amy was sure hadn't been inside when they'd been hiding from the Reapers.

"Because as far as they're concerned, we were never here," the Doctor affirmed. "Rose will probably remember hearing stories about a strange woman who was there for her father when he died that might inspire her to want to come back here in the first place, and that driver will decide to stay instead of running away because he felt guilty over the previous near-miss, but our presence here… it doesn't work in this timeline."

"Right…" Amy nodded uncertainly, before she smiled at the Doctor. "So the Faction didn't win?"

"Reality's take a couple of knocks, but the fine details are still the same; the Faction would have wanted Rose to save her dad completely, or at least put me in a position where I would have had to save him and bend my own rules…"

The Doctor trailed off, shrugging uncomfortably as the two young women looked at him. "I'm not _happy_ things turned out this way, but considering what could have happened…"

"And it's easier when you didn't… Pete _chose_ what happened, right?" Natalie asked.

"Sometimes the only good option is the least of a series of bad options," the Doctor said solemnly, his expression uncomfortable even as he nodded in confirmation at his daughter. "If I'd had the chance to save Pete, I would have, but as a Time Lord…"

"Bigger picture, right?" Amy smiled at him in understanding. "We get it, Doctor; you save everyone you can, but if you could save everyone, you'd just be a better version of the Faction."

"Better version?" Natalie asked.

"I'd be choosing who lives and who dies based on what I feel is right," the Doctor explained solemnly. "Maybe I'd be doing it for better reasons, but benevolent dictatorship is still a dictatorship; the people of the universe deserve a chance to make their own mistakes and live their lives in freedom, not have me or the Grandfather deciding to make sure things happen the way _we_ want them to."

The three stood in silence for a few moments, each contemplating what they had just spoken about, before the Doctor stepped away from the young women and walked over to where Rose was still crouched beside her father.

"Come on, Rose Tyler," the Doctor said, indicating the blue box on the opposite side of the street, the ship apparently fully restored once the timeline had stabilised itself. "It's time to take you home."

"Ri… right," Rose nodded at the Doctor, swallowing and rubbing her eyes as she stood up from her father's body. "Let's… let's go."

The way Rose phrased that made Amy wonder; she had never explicitly been a neglected child, but she had enough experience of avoiding the truth when questioned to realise that there was something Rose wasn't telling them…


	38. The New World

"So… you're really his _daughter_?" Rose looked at Natalie in awe as the four travellers stood inside the TARDIS, the Doctor at the controls while the three women stood off to the side, the other woman having only expressed a brief surprise at K9's presence before leaving the robot dog alone. "And you're just… what, a few _years_ old?"

"Give or take, anyway," Natalie shrugged. "I lost track of the exact time while I was… well, I went travelling and I fell through a few dimensional rifts…"

"Ah," Rose said, nodding uncertainly. "Uh… can we just accept that I accept I won't really understand any more of that?"

"Fair enough," Natalie said. "We were separated for a long time because he thought I was dead, and now we're back together; let's leave it at that."

"…Not a nice story, is it?" Rose looked at Natalie with a new sense of discomfort.

"In a world where the Faction can screw with history whenever they want so long as they're careful, it wouldn't be," Amy pointed out grimly. "They have no fixed base, they have no definite agenda beyond 'smash stuff and break history', they have all that power and only know enough about it to be dangerous without knowing enough to know what they shouldn't do."

"Ah," Rose said.

"OK," the Doctor called out, smiling at the girls from his position by the console. "Course is set and we're on our way to London; any preference for exact date, Miss Tyler?"

"Well-" Rose began, before the entire TARDIS suddenly shook, the time rotor essentially exploding in the middle of the room, leaving all four organic passengers feeling as though they were suddenly accelerating rapidly upwards before the sensation shifted.

"What's happened?" Rose asked, leaning against the console with the others.

"The time vortex; it's gone!" the Doctor yelled, hands flying over the nearest panel as he looked at the screen in shock. "That's impossible; it's just… gone!"

"Hold on; the _time vortex_ is _gone_?" Amy repeated incredulously. "As in, the thing we _travel_ through? Isn't that like the _Pacific_ vanishing while we're on a boat?"

"Affirmative," K9 noted from where he was spinning around in place on the console room floor, as though scrambling to maintain his balance while the ship continued to 'fall' wherever it was going to land.

"It should be!" the Doctor yelled, scrambling around the console and over Natalie to take a better look at another screen. "Brace yourselves; we're going to crash!"

With those words, the TARDIS jolted to a halt, what looked like gas masks falling from the ceiling as the sensation of falling came to an end just as abruptly, and far less violently, then when it had started.

"Everyone all right?" the Doctor asked, looking anxiously around the console room.

"We're good," Amy said, exchanging a glance with Natalie and Rose.

"All personal systems accounted for, Master," K9 put in. "Warning; TARDIS power systems have been depleted."

"Wait… you mean…" Natalie looked anxiously between the dog and her father.

"The TARDIS is dead," the Doctor said solemnly, reaching out to flick a single switch as he stared at the now-dim central column.

"Oh God," Amy said, looking at her friend in horror.

"But… you can fix it, right?" Rose asked.

"There's nothing to fix," the Doctor said grimly, walking around the console, tapping a couple of buttons only to be met with no response. "She's perished. The last TARDIS in the universe… extinct."

"Couldn't we get help?" Natalie asked. "I mean, we landed _somewhere_ ; there has to be something out there, right?"

"We fell out of the vortex, through the void, into nothingness," the Doctor countered, looking solemnly at his daughter. "We're in some sort of… no place… the silent void, the lost dimension-"

"Otherwise known as London?" Amy cut in, looking back from the TARDIS door with a smile as she indicated their landing spot, right next to a bus stop, on the other side of the road from an old church and a red-bricked building, right next to a river that had to be the Thames even without the Houses of Parliament on the other side.

" _London_?" Rose looked at Amy incredulously. "You mean… after all that panic, we got where we were going anyway?"

"Hold on…" the Doctor said, walking out of the TARDIS, followed by the other women and K9.

"Yep; here we are," Amy said, picking up a discarded newspaper from the ground. "OK, the date is February 2007; a bit behind the times for me, but how's that for you?"

"Uh… a bit earlier than it was when I left, but just by a couple of months," Rose conceded.

"So this is London," the Doctor said.

"That would appear to be the case," Amy said with a nonchalant smile.

"Your London."

"I thought Amy lived in Leadworth?" Natalie asked.

"Well, I'm not _that_ far from London-" Amy began.

"And your London includes Zepplins all of a sudden?"

"Includes _what_?" the three women asked, looking sharply upwards at that announcement to see the aforementioned massive airships moving through the sky above them.

Frankly, Amy was just ashamed that she hadn't realised these things were there earlier; she must have been so focused on the familiar landmarks of Parliament and Big Ben that she hadn't bothered looking up.

"That's beautiful," Natalie said, before looking at the Doctor and Amy. "I take it those aren't normal for London at this time?"

"We haven't even _used_ zepplins for years," Amy confirmed, staring at the sky in confusion. "Wasn't there some big mess with them in the 1930s…?"

"This isn't our world," the Doctor said firmly.

"But if the date's the same…" Rose began uncertainly.

"It's parallel, isn't it?" Amy looked at the Time Lord. "Like that time you went to the alternate world where you were a fascist dictator?"

"You were _what_?" Rose looked sharply at the Time Lord.

"It was an _alternate_ version of me who went mad for reasons I've never been sure of; he's long dead, so it's not important," the Doctor said dismissively.

"Uh… I'm sorry, but what's all this about _alternates_?" Rose asked, after looking around confirmed that nobody else was showing a particularly strong reaction to that news.

"Parallel universe, Rose," Amy explained. "The idea that other realities can exist where everything's the same but history's different in some way or another, like traffic lights are blue, Kennedy was never assassinated, or-"

"Or he's still alive," Rose cut Amy off, staring in shock at an advert on the side of what looked like a bus stop, revealing the form of Pete Tyler in a sharp business suit, silver things in his ears, holding a bottle labelled 'Vitex Lite', apparently in a cherry flavour. "A parallel world and my dad's still alive…"

"Don't," the Doctor said, stepping forward to stand grimly in front of Rose. "Don't think about it, Rose; this is _not_ your world."

"Uh… just to check," Amy raised an uncertain hand as she looked at the Doctor, "this couldn't just be a world where Pete lived-?"

"He didn't have the impact and Rose wouldn't have been using the kind of temporal technology necessary to cause a Johnbert-style shattering of the timeline like this, so no," the Doctor cut her off.

"A what?" Natalie asked.

"A Johnbert-style disruption of the timeline refers to an event where one single act that changes history is carried out in such an impulsive and desperate moment that it causes multiple fractures in the timeline beyond what could be caused by a simple butterfly effect, affecting events that took place _before_ the time of the original change as well as afterwards," the Doctor explained. "You had a good idea in principle, Pond, but this can't be an example of that; Pete wasn't historically significant enough for his life or death to cause a disruption that would have reached back to a point a good few decades before he was even born, and the Faction are many things but they aren't stupid enough to use rip engines."

"…Rip engines?" Rose asked, her attention only half on the Doctor as she continued to stare at the poster of her now-living father.

"Time machines that operate by literally tearing holes in the universe; they're so dangerous they've been banned by every society that survived creating them, and are one of the few methods of time travel that could cause a Johnbert rift if handled improperly," the Doctor explained briefly, before his attention returned to Amy. "Anyway, Pond, this can't be that; the Faction might enjoy chaos, but even they wouldn't send Rose back in time with a system that would have caused damage to reality just by the act of sending her back in the first place."

"So… this is nothing to do with me?" Rose said, looking at the poster with a tentative smile, in a manner that left Amy feeling that Rose had only been listening to about half of what they'd just been talking about. "This is just… he lived and he pulled this off all on his own? All those daft little schemes of his… one of them finally worked?"

"Rose," the Doctor looked firmly at the young blonde, "I know that I have given you no clear reason to trust me, but trust this; looking at that image will bring you _nothing_. Your father died when you were six months old; this Pete may have his own Jackie, his own Rose, and they are not-"

"OK," Amy said sharply, as she stepped in between the Doctor and Rose. "Let's just… calm down before we do or say anything we'll regret later?"

"…Good point, Pond," the Doctor nodded at his friend and student, before turning to look at Rose with a less stern expression. "Just… look, go with Amy and… see what you can find out about Pete Tyler's life here if you want, but don't…"

"Don't just drop in on him," Rose finished, nodding at the Doctor in awkward understanding. "Right."

"Good," the Doctor nodded at the young blonde before he turned to look at Natalie. "In the meantime, you're with me and K9; we need to take a better look at the TARDIS and see what we've got to work with."


	39. Party at the Tylers'

"So?" Amy looked anxiously up at the Doctor as he walked over to join her and Rose as they sat on a bench, Natalie and K9 close behind the Time Lord. "How's things?"

"Not brilliant, but could be worse," the Doctor smiled. "We managed to find a small power cell that still had a few dregs of energy inside it, and Natalie and I worked together to give it a quick boost; it'll take a day or so until it completes its recharging cycle, but once it's done, we'll have enough power to get back home."

"That's great," Amy smiled, before she looked at Rose. "Hear that, Rose? We'll be home soon-"

"I don't exist here."

"What?" Natalie looked at Rose in surprise.

"My phone connected," Rose explained, her tone sounding more desolated than she had even after seeing her father die. "There's this Cybus Network… it fixes your phone, gave me internet access… I looked up my dad, and he still married Mum, but they never had _me_."

"Oh," the Doctor said, looking at Rose with a new sense of sympathy.

"That's…" Amy said, reaching over to awkwardly pat Rose on the shoulder. "Well, it's… I know it doesn't really mean much, but I… we're sorry."

"Thanks," Rose smiled tentatively back at the other woman, before she turned to the Doctor. "They've got everything else… they're rich, big house, cars, but…"

"You know you can't-"

" _I know_!" Rose yelled, shoulders shaking with barely-suppressed sobs, the two humans, two Gallifreyians, and one robot dog sitting in silence for a few moments before Rose spoke again. "I know I can't just… get back into their lives, but if I could… I just want to _see_ them…"

"I… I understand," the Doctor said, nodding solemnly at the young woman. "Just so long as you understand you can't _talk_ to them about… well, all this."

"Right," Rose nodded, giving the Doctor a tentative smile. "Th… thanks."

"Uh… not meaning to sound harsh, but is this a smart move?" Amy asked. "I mean-"

"Rose only got dragged into this because the Faction thought she'd be a nice bit of bait for a sick trap," the Doctor said grimly, before he turned back to the young blonde. "It's not bringing your dad back, but… well, I can give you this moment, I suppose."

"Thanks…" Rose sniffed, before she smiled tentatively at him. "You'll… will you come with me?"

"We have twenty-four hours to kill while the TARDIS recharges; this is as good a way to use them as any," Natalie smiled. "Where are they?"

"Got their address here," Rose said, blinking away the last of her tears as she indicated her phone. "Big place on the outskirts of town; bit of a walk, but we can do it in a couple of hours."

"A couple of hours?" Amy asked.

"We can't use public transport; too many potential issues of conflicting currency," the Doctor clarified.

"Conflicting currency?" Rose and Natalie asked.

"Hold on, you mentioned something about that once…" Amy looked thoughtfully at him. "You briefly went to a parallel universe where you got paid with money with the face of King Edward VIII?"

"Why's that significant?" Natalie asked.

"…he abdicated before he took the throne, right?" Rose put in.

"Exactly," the Doctor nodded. "This might not be that reality, but the point still stands; we have to assume that any currency on us won't be valid, which means we can only get to this address by walking."

"Well… could use the stroll, I s'pose," Rose shrugged uncertainly as she stood up. "Let's go."

* * *

The subsequent walk to the Tyler household was relatively uneventful, compared to some of the Doctor's past experiences with parallel universes. He was unnerved when the rest of the street they were walking through suddenly came to a halt as information was downloaded into their 'EarPods' and Rose's phone received a similar update, but aside from this being an extension of humanity's fixation on technology in this universe, it didn't strike the Time Lord as something he should be legitimately worried about. The EarPods were invasive, but they didn't strike the Doctor as being dangerously so, and for the moment he just wanted to focus on giving Rose her brief gift rather than getting involved in events here.  
  
 _I have enough problems back in my universe without getting caught up in an argument that's based on my own opinions; I need to get Rose home and get on with finding the Faction_ …  
  
If only he could shake the feeling that there was more to 'Cybus' as a name than just the idea that someone chose it because it sounded good…  
  
"And that's it?" Rose asked, looking at the large house in awe, the building at least twice the size of Amy and the Doctor's houses back in Leadworth even when they were put together, to say nothing of the long path leading up to the door and the car park off to the side.  
  
"That's it," the Doctor nodded. "It matches the address, anyway."  
  
"And he got all this from selling drinks?" Natalie looked at the house in surprise.  
  
"There are reasons I'm never sure about money; some people find it easy to make a lot in a very short amount of time, while others have to struggle just to get by," the Doctor shrugged. "I once tried to lose some of the money I've accumulated through excess interest and ended up becoming the legal owner of the most successful restaurant in the universe."  
  
"You have so much money you were trying to lose it and you needed to set up that stock market thing?" Amy looked at him in surprise.  
  
"I was trying to dispose of the excess I'd accumulated a few decades in the future; things happened between now and then, and I wanted to be sure I'd have enough for now," the Doctor shrugged, before he turned back to the house in front of them. "Any ideas what's with the guests?"  
  
"It's February the first," Rose commented, her expression still in a semi-numb state between pleasure and shock. "Mum's birthday. Even in a parallel universe, she still loves a party."  
  
"It's your mother's birthday?" Natalie smiled. "What's that-?"  
  
"We'll work on that later," the Doctor said, looking apologetically at his daughter before looking at the three young women and the robot dog. "Anyway, if we're going to take a look at Pete Tyler's guest list, we need to get inside that party, so…"  
  
He reached into his jacket and pulled out the leather wallet containing the psychic paper with a smile. "Does anyone have an alias preference?"

* * *

"OK," Amy said, looking uncertainly at the Doctor as she walked briskly alongside him, trying to ignore the part of her mind that was simultaneously worried about how she looked in this maid's uniform and how smart the Doctor looked in his waiter's tux, "I get leaving K9 outside, but Natalie?"  
  
"She'd be too interested in the concept of a birthday, and she's too obviously a soldier when she's casual; she can't _think_ herself 'invisible' like we can," the Doctor clarified, looking back at Rose. "How about you?"  
  
"We could have been _anyone_ ," Rose noted, shooting a glare at the Doctor even as she held up her tray of canapes, Amy holding a similar tray while the Doctor had chosen a set of wine glasses. "If that psychic paper stuff could make us anyone, why did we have to be the servants? Just once, I would have liked to be at something like this as a guest…"  
  
"If you want to know what's going on, work in the kitchens," Amy said, exchanging smiles of understanding with the Doctor as they walked through a couple of what Amy was inclined to consider 'leisure rooms' as they had seats and bookcases. "Nobody pays you any mind, so you get to listen in more easily."  
  
"Exactly," the Doctor nodded at Amy as they entered a large ballroom, before indicating a group of people gathered in one part of the room. "And on that topic, according to Lucy, that man over there-"  
  
"Who's Lucy?" Rose cut in.  
  
"That one carrying the salmon pinwheels," Amy clarified with a smile, indicating a young woman with darker skin and rich brown hair tied back in a ponytail.  
  
"Good memory," the Doctor nodded at Amy before turning back to Rose, indicating the smartly-dressed dark-skinned man with close-cropped dark hair. "Anyway, Lucy says that man over there is the President of Great Britain."  
  
"President?" Rose and Amy repeated in surprise.  
  
"Parallel world," the Doctor shrugged. "It could be worse; I encountered one world where Britain was ruled by a dictator who'd been in power for almost forty years-"  
  
"Excuse me!" another voice suddenly called out, prompting the three dimensional travellers to walk briskly towards the main entrance area of the house to see Pete Tyler standing on the stairs, hands behind his back as he addressed the room in what had to be feigned discomfort. "Thank you very much. Thank you… if I could just have your attention, please?"  
  
Pete took a moment to wait for the initial responses to his words to die down before he continued talking. "I'd just like to say thank you to you all, for coming on this, this very special occasion. My wife's thirty ninth."  
  
"Don't believe that one!" another man said amid a series of mutterings from the crowd.  
  
"Trust me on this," Pete said, before clapping his hands together. "And so, without any further ado, here she is, the birthday girl; my lovely wife, Jackie Tyler."  
  
With that introduction, Jackie Tyler walked into the room, the woman they'd seen in voluminous pink just a few hours ago now wearing a skintight black dress with her hair tied up in an elegant bundle.  
  
"Now, I'm not making a speech," Jackie said as she took up position beside Pete. "That's what my parties are famous for. No work, no politics, just a few good mates and plenty of black market whisky- Pardon me, Mister President. So, yeah, get on with it. Enjoy, enjoy."  
  
Glancing over at Rose, Amy was surprised to see tears gleaming in the corner of the blonde's eyes as she looked at the alternate versions of her parents, the young woman clearly shaken by something deeper than just seeing her father alive all over again…  
  
"You know you can't stay," the Doctor said, his voice low as he looked warningly at Rose. "Even if there was some way of telling them-"  
  
"'Course," Rose said, collecting herself. "Can't just leave home, can I? 'Sides, they've got each other already…"  
  
"And they don't have you," Amy reached over to give Rose's shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "You've got your mum and no dad, I've got the Doctor and my only blood family's my aunt… all these worlds, and nobody ever gets it right, do they?"  
  
"Miracle of the multiverse, Pond," the Doctor smiled. "Even the best world has something wrong with it; DC's most peaceful parallel universe only existed because their Batman went mad and killed all the villains."  
  
"You read comics?" Rose looked at the Doctor with a smile.  
  
"I have a lot of free time sometimes; I read everything at one point or another," the Doctor shrugged.  
  
"Rose!" Jackie suddenly called out, smiling as a small dog ran from another part of the house towards Jackie. "There's my little girl! Come to mummy, come to mummy!"  
  
"…At least you know she always liked your name?" Amy suggested out of a lack of anything else to say in this situation, Rose staring incredulously as the small dog that had her name in this world was picked up by her mother.  
  
"There's never a good time for that kind of discovery, is there?" the Doctor looked at his temporary companion with a smile.  
  
"What was with that laugh when he was talking about this being her thirty-ninth?" Amy asked.  
  
"Huh?" Rose said, shaking her head as she looked over at Amy. "Oh, this is… well, it'd be her fortieth back home; she must have officially changed it for some reason."  
  
"By one year?"  
  
"No idea why she'd bother," Rose shrugged, even as she shot a glare after her mother that Amy doubted she was even aware of. "Don't ask me why; Mum's always been touchy when people call her old, but that's a bit of a minor lie, all things considered…"  
  
"Mmm," the Doctor said, before he seemed to come to a decision. "You two mingle if you want, but I'm just going to find a computer; I'd like to see more about those EarPod things…"


	40. Siege of Tyler Mansion

As the computer played through the introductory video, the Doctor wondered if he was just being overly cautious; granted his past experiences with parallel universes had never been easy, but so far he hadn't found anything to suggest that his discomfort with those EarPod things was based on anything more than his own distaste for the concepts they represented.

 _Stick humanity in a network like that, and how long until data receivers become something more invasive_ …

Unfortunately, even in a parallel universe, there were lines he couldn't let himself cross; preventing alien intervention, like that 'Network' he'd encountered in the mid-eighties, was one thing, but as far as he could tell this was all purely human technology that wasn't actively harming anyone, so he had to have faith that someone would stop it going too far. The talk about how precious the human brain was could have been worrying, but there was nothing here to suggest anything more than one man's obsession…

"… _is the ultimate upgrade_ ," Lumic's announcement continued. "Our greatest step into cyberspace."

That word made the Doctor's blood run cold.

 _Cyber_ …

It was too great to be a coincidence on top of everything else, even if he privately wondered at the timing of it all when floodlights suddenly went on outside the house and revealed a series of silver figures marching towards the building.

The Doctor didn't stop to ponder the impossible timing of it all, instead dashing out of the room and hurrying for the main part of the house, finding Amy by a window in the drawing room just as Rose joined the redhead in staring out at the garden in shock.

"What's going on?" Amy looked anxiously at the Doctor.

"It's happening again," the Doctor said grimly, staring out of the window. "I've seen them before back home…"

"Back home?" Rose looked sharply at the Doctor. "What are they?"

"Cybermen," the Doctor said grimly, as the figures approaching the house came into clearer view beyond the floodlights. They were more obviously armoured than the traditional Cybermen he'd dealt with back in his home universe, which had typically adopted a looser covering around their limbs even if their heads and chests had been consistently protected, but there were enough details for him to be sure that he was dealing with a counterpart of his old enemies. Quickly retreating from the window, the Doctor looked anxiously around the drawing room to take in the people still around him, but there was no time to get anyone to safety before the Cybermen broke down the windows in other parts of the hall, simultaneously advancing into the drawing room from other parts of the house. The Doctor could only do his best to stay close to Rose and Amy as the Cybermen herded the guests into corners of the room, the silver figures taking up position around the most obvious exits.

"Mr Lumic," the President said as he responded to a ringing from his EarPods, the short-haired dark-skinned man standing just in front of the Doctor.

" _Mister President_ ," an unfamiliar voice responded, so loud it could be heard despite the medium, " _I suppose a remark about crashing the party would be appropriate at this point_."

"I forbade this," the President said, which at least assured the Doctor that he was dealing with a sane government figure in this Earth.

" _These are my children, sir_ ," Lumic's voice replied. " _Would you deny my family_?"

"Hold on… Cybermen?" Amy looked sharply at the Doctor. "You mentioned them in our lessons…"

"What are they?" Rose asked. "Robots?"

"Worse than that," the Doctor corrected his new companion grimly.

"Who were these people?" the President said, which at least affirmed that this man knew what he was looking at, while Lumic's dimly-heard response that they didn't matter reinforced the Doctor's thoughts that the scientist wasn't the kind of man the Doctor was ever going to like.

_At least Doctorman Allan thought she had no choice when she began the program on Mondas; what's this man's justification…?_

"They were people?" Amy and Rose whispered to the Doctor almost simultaneously.

"Until the conversion process literally took away their humanity," the Doctor affirmed, silently approving of their natural horror at this situation. "They've living brains inside cybernetic bodies, with all emotion removed."

"Why no emotions?" Rose asked.

"It hurts," the Doctor said grimly.

"I demand to know, Lumic," the President said urgently. "These people; who were they?"

" _They were homeless, and wretched, and useless, until I saved them, and elevated them, and gave them life eternal_ ," Lumic's voice said at the other end of the line, with the ranting the Doctor recognised from fanatics all over time and space. " _And now I leave you in their capable hands. Goodnight, sir. Goodnight, Mister President_."

" _We have been upgraded_ ," one of the Cybermen said, stepping forward to address the President.

"Into what?" the Doctor asked, taking those words as his own cue to take a more public stance for the first time in this universe; maybe these weren't 'his' Cybermen, but right now he was probably the closest thing this reality had available to an expert.

" _The next level of mankind_ ," the Cyberman replied. " _We are Human point two. Every citizen will receive a free upgrade. You will become like us_."

"I'm sorry," the President said, earning him further points in the Doctor's eyes for the genuine compassion evident behind that statement. "I'm so sorry for what's been done to you, but listen to me. This experiment ends tonight."

" _Upgrading is compulsory_ ," the Cyberman said.

"And if I refuse?" the President said.

"I wouldn't-" the Doctor began.

"What if I refuse?" the President repeated.

"I would really recommend not-" the Doctor tried to say.

"What happens if I refuse?" the President repeated (The Doctor wished he could feel more offended about being ignored, but he had to recognise that right now he didn't actually have any known reputation in this universe and he was too physically young to be taken that seriously).

" _Then you are not compatible_ ," the Cyberman said simply.

"What happens then?" the President countered.

" _You will be deleted_ ," the Cyberman said, grabbing the President by the neck and generating a massive electrical shock as it forced him to his knees. Making a mental note to mourn the man once it was safe to do so, the Doctor grabbed Amy and Rose and ran for the nearest open window as the Cybermen began to deliver a similar treatment to the surrounding guests.

"My mum's in there-!" Rose began as they hit the grass.

"We can't help anyone by staying in there right now; we have to get away from here!" the Doctor said urgently, scanning his surroundings while quickly going over his options. He had the secondary power cells in his pocket, but after the drain the original cell had experienced during the Shansheeth's attempted hijack, he needed to keep them both at a good level if he was going to have any chance of getting the TARDIS back to their universe, so he'd rather not use any of that charge unless he had to. As a small squad of Cybermen halted their attempt to flee across the lawn, the trio ran around the side of the house in time to join Pete as he leapt through another window.

"Pete, is there a way out?" the Doctor looked urgently at the other man.

"Side gate- who the hell are you?" Pete looked at the Doctor in confusion. "How did you know all that stuff?"

"You'd never believe it," the Doctor replied, before he turned back to the lawn around them, anxiously trying to find a way out that didn't involve running towards more Cybermen…

"Get behind me!" someone yelled, followed by two young men running up beside them and firing a pair of guns at the approaching Cybermen, the Doctor unsurprised when that attack resulted in nothing more than a few small sounds as the bullets bounced off the armour.

"Oh my… _Mickey_?" Rose looked at the darker-skinned of the two men who'd just appeared in shock, as the two men lowered their weapons in shock.

"What?" 'Mickey' looked at her in surprise. "It's Ricky, sweetheart; who the hell's Mickey?"

"Local version, Rose," Amy said anxiously under her breath, even as more Cybermen approached the group, encircling the three TARDIS travellers and their new associates. "I take it you knew Mickey back home?"

"Yeah, but-" Rose began.

"We're surrounded!" the unnamed man with 'Rickey' said, raising his weapon as another group of Cybermen took up position around them.

"Put your gun down!" the Doctor said urgently. "Bullets won't stop them-"

He cursed the situation as the other man started firing the weapon again; his latest plan was desperate, but it stood a better chance of working than that man's efforts.

"I _said_ that won't do anything!" the Time Lord said, before turning to address the Cybermen, arms raised as he hoped these Cybermen were anything like the ones he knew. "There's no need to damage us; we're good stock. We're volunteering for the upgrade program; take us to be processed."

" _You are rogue elements_ ," one of the Cybermen said, stepping forward to address him directly.

"But we surrender," the Doctor said, immediately considering his alternatives.

" _You are incompatible_."

"But this is a surrender."

" _You will be deleted_."

"We're _surrendering_ ," the Doctor repeated, praying that this was just an early programming glitch that the Cyberman would get over; the ones he knew never turned down fresh material, so if they could just take him to the processing plant, he might have a chance to turn this mess around…

" _You are inferior_ ," the Cyberman said. " _Man will be reborn as Cyberman, but you will perish under maximum deletion_."

" _NO_!" another voice yelled from behind the Cyberman. Instantly, the Cyberman directly in front of the Doctor fell over, its body sparking with electrical energy, revealing the young blonde woman standing behind it holding a large metal dog in her arms.

" _Natalie_!" Amy grinned.

"Who?" Pete and Rickey said simultaneously.

"My daughter," the Doctor grinned, pride overwhelming his usual desire to avoid awkward questions as Natalie turned K9 to fire at the other Cybermen immediately between her and the others. Reaching into his pocket, the Doctor pulled out one of the power cells and spun around to face the Cybermen behind him, a quick moment of telepathic focus all he needed to fire a burst of energy at those Cybermen his daughter couldn't eliminate with K9.

" _To the van_!" Ricky's unnamed associate yelled, Rose, Amy and Natalie quickly hurrying after him and Ricky towards a blue van that had just driven into the garden.

"I've got to go back!" Pete yelled as he started to move towards the house. "My wife's in there-!"

"Anyone inside that house is dead or as good as by now," the Doctor said, grabbing the seemingly older man by the arm. "If you want to help, don't let her die for nothing; you've got to come with us right now!"

"Come on!" a woman's voice yelled from the van. "Get a move on!"

Dashing back to the van, the Doctor saw Amy and Rose talking at the corner, Rose looking anxiously at the house while Amy talked to her with an urgent expression, but the conversation ended before the Doctor could hear what either were saying as the blonde and the redhead climbed into the van.

"Finished chatting?" the woman in the driver's seat said as the Time Lord and the local businessman climbed in. "Never seen a slower getaway in my life!"

As the Doctor dived into the van and slammed the rear door behind him, the woman drove away towards what the Doctor hoped would be the side gate Pete had mentioned earlier, leaving the Cybermen behind as they turned back towards the house.

"Is this safe?" the woman in the driver's seat looked back at them. "I mean, those things-"

"Are slow on foot and stay on the ground," the Doctor assured her as they passed through the gates. "I doubt they can follow us on foot, and if they had immediate access to any vehicles we'd have seen something already."

"Right…" Ricky said, as the van finally reached a main road and began to advance back into London. "OK, what the Hell is _that_?"

"Our dog," Natalie smiled, putting K9 on the floor of the van.

"Affirmative," K9 said. "My designation is K9."

"And what about that… thing?" Ricky said, looking over at the Doctor.

"If you're looking for a weapon, that's a short-term solution at best," the Doctor said, patting the pocket where he'd left the power cell. "I'm the only one who can use it like that, and I can only generate so much power at a time without wearing it out completely, so right now it needs time to charge."

"Right," Ricky said, shaking his head. "So what you're saying is that the only semi-reliable weapon we've got 'gainst those things is in the robot dog's nose."

"And whatever we can use against men like _him_ ," the unnamed man said, indicating Pete.

"Leave him alone!" Rose said indignantly. "What's he done wrong?"

"Oh, you know, just laid a trap that's wiped out the government and left Lumic in charge," the young man said.

"If I was part of all that, do you think I'd leave my wife inside?" Pete protested.

"Maybe your plan went wrong," Ricky countered. "Still gives us the right to execute you, though."

"Do that and you make _me_ your enemy," the Doctor said, looking coldly at the man; he sincerely hoped that Mickey wasn't this ruthless back 'home' or he'd have further questions about Rose as a person. "And believe me, you _don't_ want that."

"All the same," Ricky said, not acknowledging the Doctor's objection but not rejecting it either, "we have evidence that says Pete Tyler's been working for Lumic since twenty point five."

"Is that true?" Rose looked at her father, leaving the Doctor to exchange a glance with Amy and Natalie as they wondered what 'twenty point five' referred to.

"Tell them, Mrs M.," Ricky said, after Pete just sat in awkward silence.

"We've got a government mole who feeds us information," Mrs M said. "Lumic's private files, his South American operations, the lot. Secret broadcasts twice a week."

"Broadcast from Gemini?" Pete cut in.

"And how do you know that?" Ricky pointed firmly at the businessman.

"I'm Gemini," Pete said. "That's me."

"Yeah, well, you would say that-" Ricky began.

"Encrypted wavelength six five seven using binary nine," Pete cut him off. "That's the only reason I was working for Lumic. To get information. I thought I was broadcasting to the Security Services. What do I get? Scooby Doo and his gang. They've even got the van."

"There's nothing wrong with a van as a headquarters; hard to track and enough space to keep all your key essentials together," the Doctor shrugged, looking around the van with a smile. "I'm the Doctor, by the way; this is my assistant Amy, K9's introduced himself, and this is Natalie."

"Assistant?" the young man looked at Amy.

"He's a scientist who deals with… unconventional problems," Amy replied. "We were at the party to… look into a couple of things."

"But we definitely _weren't_ expecting anything like that," Natalie added.

"I'm Rose, by the way," Rose put in.

"Even better; that's the name of my dog," Pete shook his head, before he looked at Rose with a slight smile. "Still, at least I've got the catering staff on my side."

"I knew you weren't a traitor," Rose said solemnly.

"Why's that then?" Pete.

"I just… did," Rose said, awkwardly acknowledging the Doctor's pointed stare.

"They took my wife," Pete said, focus shifting back to his own recent loss.

"She might still be alive," Rose pointed out.

"That's even worse," Pete said. "Because that's what Lumic does. He takes the living and he turns them into those machines."

"Cybermen," the Doctor corrected him. "They're called Cybermen. And I'd take those ear pods off, if I were you; Lumic could be listening."

Taking the Doctor's point, Pete took out his EarPods and handed them to the Doctor, who quickly turned the sonic screwdriver on them before he looked up at the van's other passengers.

"But Lumic's overreached himself," the Time Lord said firmly. "For all his power, he's still just a businessman, and he's assassinated the President."

"Not a good policy anywhere, huh?" Natalie smiled.

"Hardly," the Doctor confirmed. "All we need to do is get to the city and inform the authorities. I promise you all, this ends tonight."

He just hoped that he was telling the truth; he might have some ideas about these Cybermen would operate based on how the ones in his universe would respond to anything, but John Lumic's existence made things more complicated…


	41. Infiltrating Battersea

As soon as they reached London, the Doctor knew that things had just become more complicated; it was possible there was some major event going on in this parallel Earth that was just such common knowledge nobody had brought it up yet, but that didn't stop him feeling anxious about the empty streets as the van returned to the main city. With the city quiet, it didn't take long for the rest of his new group to decide to abandon the van and continue to search on foot, soon discovering themselves on the corner of a major street that was filled with a strange procession of people, their expressions either neutral or completely blank as they stared ahead of themselves.

"What the hell?" Jake asked, running on ahead to test the marchers' reaction.

"What's going on?" Rose said, staring in apprehension at the zombie-like march.

"Ear-pods," the Doctor mused grimly, noting the blue lights active on the devices closest to their side. "Lumic must have taken control."

"And I'm guessing taking them off isn't an option?" Amy put in.

"When the pods are directly linked to the brain?"

"Good point," Amy nodded.

"Honestly," the Doctor shook his head in frustration. "There are times when I really wonder about you people; someone introduces a time-saving method that involves linking into your brains and _nobody_ raises the issue of what happens if that's turned into a transmitter rather than a receiver…"

"Maybe we should worry about that _after_ we've dealt with this, Da-octor?" Natalie asked.

"Hey, over here!" Jake said urgently. Following their new ally to a corner, the Doctor and his companions soon saw that a squad of Cybermen were standing in front of a group of houses, waiting for the owners to walk out and join the Cybermen before the metal men turned around and began to walk way.

"Where are they going?" Rose asked.

"Lumic's base of operations?" Amy suggested. "I mean, he sounded like he's planning to do this on a large scale, so he'd need somewhere to actually convert these people…"

"Battersea," Pete said. "That's where he was building his prototypes."

"Why's he doing this?" Rose asked the man who was her father in another life.

"He's dying," Pete replied. "This all started out as a way of prolonging life, keeping the brain alive at any cost."

"OK… so this is just a freaky coincidence, right?" Amy looked over at the Doctor. "I mean, you don't think the Cybermen from _our_ world came into _this_ one somehow?"

"No need to overthink things," the Doctor confirmed. "These Cybermen are just starting out; we can still keep them contained if we can deal with this swiftly…"

"What are you two on about?" Pete asked.

"Never mind that," Ricky said, looking grimly around at the rest of the group as he stood up from his position alongside Jake. "Come on, we need to get out of the city. OK, we split up. Mrs Moore, you look after that bloke; Jake, distract them on the right, and I'll go left. We'll meet back at Bridge Street."

"Natalie, Rose, you go with Jake," the Doctor nodded at the two blondes. "Amy, you and K9 go with Mrs Moore and Pete; I'll go with Ricky here."

"Hey, who put you-?" Ricky began to protest.

"Just _go_ ," Amy said, glaring in frustration at the young man as she picked up K9 and hurried down another side-street with her designated companions. As Natalie and Rose hurried off with Jake, Ricky rolled his eyes and ran off with the Doctor, the Time Lord and his new ally moving briskly along for a few moments until they reached an industrial complex.

"Did they see us?" Ricky looked urgently at the Doctor. "Do they know where we are?"

"I'm prepared to guess that Lumic has a few satellites up there, but whether he'd _bother_ looking for us is something else," the Doctor pointed out. "Right now he probably has a very low opinion of us when the only thing we've done so far is run away from him; he's not going to spend a lot of time tracking us when he doesn't have to."

"Right…" Ricky said, looking curiously at the Doctor. "Seriously, who the hell are you? You show up with a robot dog, a redhead and two blondes, and you said one of them's your _kid_?"

"Long story?" the Doctor shrugged as he looked back at Ricky. "Right now, just focus on the fact that I'm here to help and we'll take it from there."

"Probably good call," Ricky nodded after a moment's thought, looking at the Doctor in an appraising manner. "Don't know where you all came from, but… you're not that bad."

"That's better than I sometimes get," the Doctor smiled at Ricky, before he indicated another path. "This way; come on!"

There were a few close calls as the Doctor and Ricky ran, occasionally splitting up to better stay ahead of the Cybermen that continued to follow at their measured pace, but eventually the men made their way to a tall chain-link fence, Ricky scrambling over it as the Doctor kept an eye on the route behind them. As Ricky reached the top, a small group of Cybermen came around the corner, but the Doctor fired a quick sonic pulse at them with the screwdriver, knocking them off-balance as they staggered into each other, and then began to hurry up the fence after his new ally.

The screwdriver trick would never have worked on the advanced alien technology of his old enemies, and he had little doubt that these Cybermen were advanced enough to adapt to it with time, but for the moment it gave him the seconds he needed to get over the fence and down the other side.

_Dangerous technology, but still basically primitive compared to the Cybermen I've met over the centuries; this might not be as hard as I was worried it would be…_

The more the Doctor ran through the deserted streets of London, the less he was sure if this should remind him of his first major operation with UNIT or the environment he'd encountered during that trip to Mondas; on both occasions, the streets were empty because the Cybermen were taking the population to be upgraded, but on London that was because they'd been knocked out while Mondas had the active Cybermen forcing everyone to be processed…

 _Actually, scratch the question; the EarPods make it clear they're processing everyone directly, so they don't_ need _to knock anyone out_.

It wasn't an encouraging thought, but right now he had to focus on getting to whatever factory Lumic was using and shut it down before things became any worse…

* * *

Less than an hour later, the small group had reunited on a waste ground, overlooking the Battersea Power Station on the other side of the river. Like most factories and power plants Amy had seen in her world, it consisted of a large grey central structure with large chimneys on top, but Any was certain that no such facility on her world had a large zeppelin in the middle of those chimneys with some kind of transmitter on its front.  
  
"So Lumic's set that place up for the Cyber-conversion process?" Amy looked at the Doctor in surprise. "How did he get the connections to do that? I mean, isn't it still in use?"  
  
"He's a very rich man without much else to spend his money on beyond keeping himself alive," Pete said solemnly. "With the amount of political power he's collected by now, you can guess he could do a lot with those three put together, particularly when places like this aren't as important as they used to be."  
  
"Fair point," the Doctor acknowledged, raising his sonic screwdriver to scan the factory opposite them. "We have to shut this place down before he can convert too many more people; once he reaches a certain number, we'll be too outnumbered to do anything even if we could get a message out to the authorities."  
  
"I've got a schematic of the old factory here," Mrs Moore put in from her seat in the side of the van, indicating the screen of her laptop as she turned it towards the rest of the group, revealing a model of the factory that rotated to display a series of black lines meeting underneath it. "There are cooling tunnels underneath the plant big enough to walk through."  
  
"We use them to mount a sneak attack on the control centre?" Natalie smiled. " _Nice_."  
  
"There's another way in," Pete said. "Through the front door. If they've taken Jackie for upgrading, that's how she'll get in."  
  
"We can't just go strolling up-" Jake protested.  
  
"We could, with these," Mrs Moore said, holding out a pair of EarPods from her bag. "They're dead, with no signal, but put them in and the Cybermen should mistake you for one of the crowd."  
  
"Then that's my job," Pete nodded.  
  
"You'll have to show no emotion," the Doctor looked urgently at the man he'd seen die in another reality less than a day ago. "None at all. Any sign of emotion would give you away."  
  
"How many of those you got?" Rose asked before Pete could respond to the Doctor's words.  
  
"Just two sets," Mrs Moore said.  
  
"OK," Rose said, turning to look at Pete. "If that's the best way of finding Jackie, then I'm coming with you."  
  
"Why does she matter to you?" Pete asked.  
  
"We haven't got time," Rose said, before looking at the Time Lord. "Doctor, I'm going with him, and that's that."  
  
"Your choice," the Doctor said, looking at the young blonde with a mix of sympathy and disappointment before he turned back to the others; he appreciated why Rose felt that way, but given the precedent she'd set recently he didn't like the implication that she was getting emotionally invested in the life of an alternate version of her mother after failing to save her father. "Right, we have two ways in already, but limited opportunity to put them to use; there's only so many ways we can get inside this factory, and we _need_ to disable the control signal-"  
  
"Control signal?" Amy looked sharply at the Doctor.  
  
"The signal for the EarPods being transmitted from… the zeppelin," the Doctor explained, scanning the factory with the sonic screwdriver before the device began to beep as he focused it on the zepplin. "Fortunately Lumic likes showing off."  
  
"Typical master criminal; loves the sound of his own voice," Amy chuckled.  
  
"You need that signal off; consider it done," Jake grinned. "Ricky and I can take that."  
  
"And I'll go with you," Amy looked at the two young men.  
  
"Excellent choice of company," the Doctor nodded, before he turned to look at the rest of the group. "Mrs Moore, Natalie, would you be willing to accompany me to the cooling tunnels?"  
  
"How can I resist an offer of cooling tunnels?" Mrs Moore smiled.  
  
"Query," K9 put in. "Which group should I join, Master?"  
  
"None," the Doctor said, walking over to crouch beside the robot dog. "I'm going to link you to Mrs Moore's laptop and leave you here; you can hack that factory's computers from outside and see if you can access their database."  
  
"He can do that?" Ricky looked at the robot dog in surprise.  
  
"He might be able to at least access the networks, but there's no way to be sure if he can physically hack them in the time we've got," the Doctor explained. "We can take the factory from inside to physically disable key systems, and K9 can try to access the factory's records from out here and send us any useful information he can find about where to go next."  
  
"Hope for the best but prepare for the worst?" Amy asked.  
  
"In this situation, what else can we do?" the Doctor replied, before he looked around the room. "If we survive this, we'll all meet you back in the TARDIS; good luck, everyone."  
  
As he exchanged one last hug with Natalie and Amy, the Doctor hoped that this wasn't about to be the last time he saw any of his companions…


	42. Into the Power Station

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To get this out of the way in advance, scenes with Pete and Rose won't be covered here because they're the same as in canon; the other groups will obviously have different conversations due to the different group dynamics

Descending a ladder into the tunnels, the Doctor wondered what it said about most advanced civilisations that this part of their cities was invariably the last thing anyone bothered to do anything about. Even in a society where they had developed the technology to create Cybermen, there was still a disturbing odour down here, even when this place was directly below the central Cybermen processing plant…

"It's freezing," Mrs Moore noted, as the three of them reached the bottom of the ladder.

"Any sign of a light switch?" the Doctor asked, wanting to eliminate the obvious option.

"Can't see a thing," the physically older woman said, before passing him a torch on a headband from her bag. "But I've got these; a device for every occasion."

"Good philosophy," the Doctor nodded as he placed the headband on. "And as for where we are…"

The torch was turned down the tunnel, revealing a collection of Cybermen along either side of the tunnel.

"Keep back-!" Natalie said, stepping forward as she shifted into a defensive combat stance.

"Wait!" the Doctor said, placing a hand on his daughter's arm as he stepped forward, walking up to examine the nearest Cyberman with a thoughtful knock on its head. "Already converted."

"And left down here?" Natalie looked at her father in surprise even as she relaxed her stance.

"They don't think they need to dispatch their forces on a large scale yet," the Doctor said, remembering the last time he'd seen the Cybermen using the sewers in London during his first collaboration with UNIT. "Just put on ice… come on, let's go slowly."

"Keep an eye out for trip systems?" Mrs Moore asked.

"Naturally," the Doctor nodded. "Lumic's a paranoid man determined to stay alive; he's not going to leave something like this place open to everyone else to wander in."

"So let's be careful," Natalie nodded, taking up position at the front of the group. "I'll keep an eye out for traps; follow my lead."

"Got it," the Doctor nodded at her.

"You're letting her lead?" Mrs Moore looked at the Doctor in surprise.

"Her situational awareness is second to none," the Doctor nodded with a smile. "We'll be fine."

* * *

Crouching on the power station roof, Amy didn't know if she should feel amused or terrified at what she was about to do.  
  
It wasn't like she hadn't faced seemingly impossible odds before now, considering such events as the time the Slitheen nearly triggered World War Three or the time Davros and the Faction tried to change the Daleks' history, but somehow this felt different. Not only was she in an entirely alternate universe with only a relatively vague knowledge of its history, but she was dealing with an army of cyborgs controlled by a man driven deranged by his illness and her immediate allies were people she only knew vaguely.  
  
"Two guards," Jake said as they hid behind a set of boxes on the roof, studying the men standing around the ladder leading up to the zeppelin. "We can take them."  
  
"No killing," Amy said firmly.  
  
"Who put you in charge?" Ricky looked pointedly at her.  
  
"If you want the Doctor's help, you don't kill people who are probably under mind control," Amy looked resolutely between the two men, even as she wished she wasn't still wearing the maid's uniform; it looked ridiculous and didn't give her a real command presence. "And trust me, you'll _need_ his help to stop the Cybermen."  
  
"…Point," Ricky said, pulling something out of his pockets.  
  
"Smelling salts?" Amy looked at the small phials in surprise.  
  
"One of Mrs Moore's little tricks," Jake smiled as he looked back at the guards. "Should knock them out. Amy, you stay here until they're down."  
  
Choosing to believe that the order was just because she wasn't properly dressed for a stealth manoeuvre like this, Amy stayed behind the box as Jake and Ricky counted down for a few seconds before they ran out from their cover and reached a position behind the two guards. Sticking the little bottles under the guards' noses, all Ricky and Jake had to do then was wait for the men to collapse, leaving Amy to walk out from the box with a smile.  
  
"Nice," she nodded at her allies as she walked up to join them, before she looked up at the zeppelin. "Hope you've got more of those; we're going to find more guards up there, and just hitting them won't always be an option."  
  
"Eager to take on the boss role, aren't you?" Jake observed.  
  
"I spent a long time training to get where I am; I know what to do and what _not_ to do in these situations," Amy affirmed as she jerked her head towards the ladder. "Get going; I'll be right behind you."  
  
For a moment, Amy wondered what it said about her life that she trusted these two men to protect her from Cybermen and brainwashed guards but didn't want to give them a chance to look up her skirt, but decided to focus on other priorities when they followed her cue and started to climb.  
  
 _It's not_ entirely _about making sure the Doctor's the first one to see anything there…_

* * *

"How did you end up with the Preachers, anyway?" the Doctor asked, after the three had spent a few moments walking through the sewers in silence.  
  
"Oh, I used to be ordinary," Mrs Moore said nonchalantly. "Worked at Cybus Industries, nine to five… till one day, I find something I'm not supposed to. A file on the mainframe."  
  
"Let me guess," Natalie observed dryly. "You read the wrong thing and suddenly people were trying to kill you?"  
  
"Had to go on the run that night," Mrs Moore confirmed. "Then I found the Preachers. They needed a techie, so I… I just sat down and taught myself everything."  
  
"And what about Mr Moore?" the Doctor asked.  
  
"Well, he's not called Mr Moore," the woman admitted, prompting a surprised glance back from the other two. "I got that from a book, Mrs Moore. It's safer not to use real names. But he thinks I'm dead. It was the only way to keep him safe. Him and the kids. What about you?"  
  
"Aside from Natalie?" the Doctor shrugged. "Just the two of us, really; there was an… well, we lost touch after an… accident."  
  
"Sorry," Mrs Moore said.  
  
"Not your fault," Natalie shrugged. "Besides, when you've got the world on your shoulders, three and a dog are more than enough."  
  
"Amy?" Mrs Moore looked curiously at them. "She's family?"  
  
"As good as," the Doctor said firmly.  
  
"If Mrs Moore is an alias, what _is_ your real name?" Natalie asked.  
  
"Angela Price," Mrs Moore said. "Don't tell a soul."  
  
"We won't," Natalie said.  
  
For a moment, the Doctor thought he heard something behind him, but that moment of curiosity ended when he looked ahead of himself and realised that Natalie and Mrs Moore hadn't moved anywhere for the last few seconds.  
  
 _Oh no_ … the Doctor thought, hearts feeling cold as his mind flashed back to that dark conversation on the Edifice with Kristeva, before he turned around to see a young man in bone-like 'armour' standing nearby.  
  
" _You_ ," the Doctor said, glaring at the man in bone.  
  
"Us," the man smiled nonchalantly. "Cousin Roger, at your service."  
  
"Roger?" the Doctor raised an eyebrow.  
  
"As in 'the Dodger'," the Cousin chuckled. "One of the Grandfather's little jokes."  
  
"Quite," the Doctor said, forcing himself to remain neutral even faced with further evidence of the Grandfather's true identity, corrupting all those little parts of himself that he used against his enemies to make himself appear more foolish than he really was…  
  
"And what are you doing here?" he said, looking probingly at the Cousin. "More to the point, _why_ are you here?"  
  
"I can't just be dropping in on a distant relative?"  
  
"I was never a member of your cult-"  
  
"You were once, and that's all we need," Cousin Roger smiled at the Doctor. "You're going to have to accept that, Doctor; there will always be a part of us in you-"  
  
"Which doesn't explain why you're _here_ ," the Doctor reiterated. "If it was this easy for the Faction to go jumping around into parallel universes, I'm sure the Grandfather would have sent someone to pick up the Dictator from before the Inferno Project destroyed his Earth or something like that, so why are you _here_?"  
  
"Why else?" Cousin Roger narrowed his eyes as he stared at the Doctor. "You."  
  
"Ah," the Doctor said, the pieces falling into place. "You drew the TARDIS to the rift that brought her here?"  
  
"You surely didn't think it was a coincidence that Miss Tyler saw that picture of her father's other self so soon after arrival?" Cousin Roger smirked.  
  
"But… hold on, are you saying…?" the Doctor looked uncertainly at the Faction member. "There are too many differences in this reality for Pete's survival to be the divergent event…"  
  
"Oh, it's not in that sense, but you can't think we'd make it that simple for you, do you?" the Cousin grinned.  
  
"A shatter effect," the Doctor said, tone grim as he remembered one of the more intimidating lectures he'd sat through at the Academy (one of Azmael's, he was fairly sure; that man had made a few mistakes with his knowledge of spatial physics, but his knowledge of temporal theory had been brilliant). "One desperate attempt to change history by an amateur time-traveller made the continuum weak enough for you to make more changes…"  
  
"And thus was this new reality born," Roger smiled nonchalantly. "Of course, we would have preferred a change to the true history rather than just another new reality, but it still makes a good distraction."  
  
"Distraction-?" the Doctor began, before he was suddenly back in reality, looking anxiously ahead of himself as a Cyberman advanced towards Natalie and Mrs Moore/Angela Price.  
  
" _Run_!" he yelled, quickly raising the sonic screwdriver to emit a brief sonic burst at the nearest Cyberman; just like the ones he'd driven off in the confrontation with Ricky, the screwdriver was able to disorientate the Cyberman just enough to give the Doctor a chance to get past it and rejoin his daughter and his new ally. Now reunited, the three ran for the end of the tunnel and began scrambling up the ladder they found there, Natalie slamming the trapdoor shut and holding it down until the Doctor could reinforce the lock with the sonic screwdriver.  
  
"That was close," the Doctor looked between the two women.  
  
"What happened back there, D-octor?" Natalie looked curiously at him. "I mean, you just fell behind and then…"  
  
"Not important," the Doctor said resolutely. "Let's just get going."  
  
Cousin Roger's words raised some points for concern, but he wasn't going to pay any more attention to anything the Faction had to say if he didn't have to; the Cousins would twist perception of everything if it suited them, to the point that he felt he'd double-check if any of them told him that rain was wet. The best thing any of them could do now was get further into the factory and hope that they could find something useful before they were detected again.  
  
After walking along this new corridor for a few more minutes, their advance was abruptly interrupted when a Cyberman stepped out in front of them.  
  
" _You are not upgraded_ ," it reported (the Doctor wondered what the point was of that blue light in its mouth; it seemed like a stupid cosmetic detail for what he'd heard about Lumic).  
  
"Yeah?" Mrs Moore countered as she reached into her bag. "Upgrade this."  
  
With that statement, she threw something at the Cyberman, the Doctor only just able to register a small rod wrapped with copper wire before the Cyberman jerked, let out a few sparks, and then collapsed to the ground.  
  
"What was that?" Natalie looked sharply at the woman.  
  
"Electromagnetic bomb," Mrs Moore clarified, as the three walked over to assess the fallen Cyberman. "Takes out computers; I figured it might stop the cyber-suit."  
  
"Good guess," the Doctor nodded in approval, as he crouched down over the body. "Time to take a closer look at these things…"  
  
"Anything like your own experience?" Natalie asked as the two women joined the Doctor.  
  
"Basic design is familiar, but the key details throw that off," the Doctor affirmed. "The logo on the front basically reduces them to a brand design, but if I'm right… underneath all that…"  
  
Reaching out, he carefully removed the logo on the chest, revealing a small black circuit board with the Cybus logo mixed in with a strange white substance illuminated by a blue internal light.  
  
"Is that flesh?" Mrs Moore asked.  
  
"Exactly," the Doctor nodded. "An artificially grown nervous system, threaded throughout the suit so that it responds like a living thing; either Lumic placed a greater focus on preserving the brain or he couldn't recruit anyone with the expertise needed to perform that kind of operation…"  
  
"Uh… am I correct in thinking that _this_ looks important?" Natalie asked, indicating the black chip.  
  
"Emotional inhibitor," the Doctor said grimly. "This must be how they shut down the emotions without neurosurgery."  
  
"Why?" Mrs Moore asked.  
  
"It's still got a human brain in there," the Doctor said solemnly. "Can you imagine its reaction if it could realise itself inside this thing?"  
  
"Except for anyone deranged enough to _want_ this to happen to them…" Natalie mused grimly.  
  
" _Why am I cold_?"  
  
"Oh my God," Mrs Moore said, staring in horror at the Cyberman. "It's alive."  
  
"And it can _feel_ ," Natalie finished.  
  
"That blast must have shut down the inhibitor…" the Doctor said, looking sympathetically at the paralysed figure, reaching out to place a hand against its 'face'. "Believe me, we never wanted this…"  
  
" _Why so cold_?" the Cyberman said.  
  
"Can you remember your name?" the Doctor asked.  
  
" _Sally_ ," the figure in metal said. " _Sally Phelan_."  
  
"You're a woman?" Natalie looked at the figure in surprise.  
  
" _Where's Gareth_?"  
  
"Gareth?" the Doctor asked.  
  
" _He can't see me_ ," the figure said, almost sounding sad at the memories invoked. " _It's unlucky the night before_ …"  
  
"You're getting married," Mrs Moore said, a twinge to her voice.  
  
" _I'm cold_ ," the woman that was now a Cyberman said. " _So cold_."  
  
"It's all right," the Doctor said, taking out the sonic screwdriver and placing it inside the chest cavity he'd just opened, the light suddenly going off inside the armour. "You sleep now, Sally. Just go to sleep."  
  
"Was there any other way?" Natalie looked at her father after the trio had sat in silence for a moment.  
  
"At this time?" the Doctor shook his head. "The 'upgrades' were too extensive; we'd never have been able to make her human again."  
  
"Then you did the right thing," Mrs Moore nodded. "Whatever has happened to Gareth… either he gets to remember Sally as she was, or he'll go down with the rest of them."  
  
"We have a plan?" Natalie asked.  
  
"The emotional inhibitor," the Doctor clarified. "Shutting it down shut Sally down completely, and there has to be a master code of some sort keeping them all immobilised; if we can find the appropriate cancellation code, then feed it throughout the system into every Cyberman's head, they'd realise what they are."  
  
"And that would shut them down?"  
  
"Hit them hard enough and it could even kill them," the Doctor said, looking grimly at the two women. "But can we do that?"  
  
"It's kill the humans who've been permanently transformed into something like this or wait until they've killed everyone else," Natalie said firmly.  
  
"She's right, Doctor," Mrs Moore nodded. "There's no choice; it's got to be done."  
  
Anything further Mrs Moore might have said was interrupted when she stood up and suddenly received a massive electric shock from another Cyberman that had come up from behind them.  
  
" _Angela_!" Natalie yelled in horror, crouching down to check the woman's pulse, a glance up and a shake of the head confirming that she was dead.  
  
"No!" the Doctor protested, looking at the gathering Cybermen in horror. "You didn't have to kill her!"  
  
" _Sensors detect binary vascular systems_ ," one of the Cybermen said, ignoring the Doctor's words as it looked between him and Natalie while another pair of Cybermen joined their original captor. " _You are unknown upgrades. You will be taken for analysis_."  
  
"Dad?" Natalie glanced at the Doctor.  
  
"Just go along with it for now," the Doctor nodded at his daughter as they raised their hands.  
  
This was an unfortunate turn of events, but they still had a chance to turn things around in their favour so long as at least one of the other teams had made it to their destination…


	43. The Cyber-Lumic

"Oh well," the Doctor said in an exaggerated tone as he and Natalie were lead into what looked like a main control room and saw their fellow prisoners, "we may have been captured, but Pete and Rose can save us; never mind."

"Are you two OK?" Natalie looked anxiously between the unaware father and the scared daughter.

"Yeah," Rose said, trembling slightly as she looked at her fellow blonde. "But they got Jackie."

"Oh," Natalie looked sadly at her new associate. "I… I'm sorry."

"We were too late," Pete said grimly. "Lumic already killed her."

"And on that topic, where is the infamous Mr Lumic?" the Doctor asked, looking around the room. "If we've come this far, shouldn't we have the chance to meet our Lord and Master?"

" _He has been upgraded_ ," a Cyberman said.

"Well, good for him," Natalie said coolly.

"I take it he's not like the rest of you?" the Doctor asked.

" _He is superior_ ," the Cyberman responded. " _The Lumic unit has been designated Cyber-Controller_."

"Should have guessed that," the Doctor observed, just as a door opened and a vast 'chair' rolled out, consisting of a mass of pipes and cables that all seemed to converge on a central figure. As the Doctor had anticipated, it was another Cyberman, but unlike the others, this one had glowing blue eyes and a transparent cranium that seemed to expose its brain, along with an extra assemblage of things at the top of its head that he couldn't quite make out with the light on the glass.

" _ **This is the Age of Steel and I am its creator**_ ," the Cyber-Lumic announced.

"That is _very_ melodramatic for someone who was meant to be taking emotion off the table," the Doctor observed, even as his mind was racing to consider the implications of this new confrontation.

Cyber-Leaders were always a challenge, but the idea that he was facing one who had been human mere hours ago and gave every impression that he still remembered that…

* * *

"Can't you go any faster?" Amy looked urgently at Ricky, anxiously pacing the zeppelin cabin.

"I'm doing the best I can here; this isn't exactly a normal system, you know!" Ricky protested, fingers flying over the keyboard he'd linked up to the zepplin's controls. "I thought you were trying to get that robot dog of yours to help out?"

"K9 can only do so much when he's dealing with an unfamiliar system-!"

" _Hey_!" Jake yelled, looking urgently behind them at what they'd assumed was an empty Cyberman suit, which was now moving towards them. "You said it was dead!"

"It's a robot suit; it's kind of hard to be sure what 'dead' means for something like this!" Amy protested as the creature advanced, before glancing back with a smile. "Wait a minute…"

"What-?" Ricky began, before Amy moved over to a particular part of the console and turned back to their enemy.

"Hey, Cyberman, over here!" she yelled, glaring defiantly at it. "Come on, this way you big metal lump! Come and have a go if you think you've got what it takes, you big bucket of bolts!"

For a moment, she waited as the Cyberman advanced towards her, only to duck to the side as it lashed out with a powerful fist that could probably have shattered concrete. The metal plate over the transmitter controls had no chance of resisting that attack, the device sending a lethal surge of electrical energy into the Cyberman before their silver attacker collapsed and the transmitter exploded. As soon as the sound of the explosion had faded, the sounds of screaming filled the air from below, which was all the evidence Amy needed that she, Ricky and Jake had completed their stage of the plan.

" _Yes_!" Amy grinned, looking out of the zepplin's window; the angle wasn't great, but if she stood on her toes and tilted her head just right, it was still possible to see humans running away from the factory below them. "We did it; the transmitter's down!"

"But we still need to find the others…" Ricky said, before he turned his attention back to the keyboard. "Maybe there's something here that'll help us access the security cameras…"

"I'll check in with K9," Amy smiled hopefully. "Maybe he can get at Lumic's internal system now that there's not a competing signal coming from the transmitter…"

She should probably spend some time talking with K9 to get a better feel for his capabilities if this kind of thing was going to happen on a regular basis, but for the moment it was best to go with one of the Doctor's most important rules; when you didn't know exactly what to do, improvise with what sounds best.

* * *

"What's that?" Rose looked up at the sound of screaming from the lower factory buildings.

"That would be our team at work," the Doctor grinned, once again satisfied at this proof of humanity's true desire for freedom, before he turned to look at the Cyber-Lumic. "Mr Lumic, I'd consider that a vote for free will over your own interpretation of 'immortality'."

" _I have factories waiting on seven continents_ ," the Cyber-Lumic replied in a tone that struck the Doctor as cold even by Cyber-standards. " _If the ear pods have failed, then the Cybermen will take humanity by force. London has fallen. So shall the world_."

"It's not fallen yet," Natalie countered, her fists clenching as she looked coldly at the thing that had once been a human being.

" _My vision is clear_ ," the Cyber-Lumic said. " _I will bring peace to the world. Everlasting peace. And unity. And uniformity_."

"And what about imagination?" the Doctor countered; this argument had never worked in the past, but if Lumic was newly-converted and programmed to be superior, maybe he'd have given himself enough free will to be made to understand why what he was doing was a bad idea. "You do realise that if you complete this process, you'll have basically destroyed the very thing that allowed you to achieve all this in the first place?"

" _What is your name_?" the Cyber-Lumic asked.

"I'm the Doctor," the Doctor replied, briefly struck at the amusing notion of having to introduce himself to a Cyberman.

" _A redundant title_ ," the Cyber-Lumic responded. " _Doctors need not exist. Cybermen never sicken_."

"Which is the point," the Doctor shook his head in frustration. "John Lumic, you were a clever man- I might almost call you a genius for coming up with all this from scratch if it wasn't an absolutely terrible idea- but everything you did was done to fight your sickness. You only made so many breakthroughs because you had something to strive for; once you've completed this 'great upgrade', the Cybermen will just remain like this forever! You'll never be more because you'll never _want_ more; you'll lose everything that makes humanity such a fascinating species!"

" _You are proud of your emotions_ ," the Cyber-Lumic said.

"Yes," the Doctor nodded.

" _Then tell me, Doctor… have you known grief, and rage, and pain_?"

"More than you could ever imagine," the Doctor responded grimly, the memory of Gallifrey's loss once again dominating his memory.

" _And they hurt_?"

"A lot."

" _I could set you free. Would you not want that? A life without pain_?"

"A life without life," the Doctor countered. "Take away my emotions and you might as well have killed me anyway."

" _Then I take that option_."

"You don't have the _right_ to take that option!" the Doctor said indignantly. "You're a _Cyber_ Controller! You don't control me or anything human!"

" _You have no means of stopping me_ ," the Cyber-Lumic said solemnly. " _I have an army. A species of my own_."

"This isn't a species, this is a product line!" Natalie protested. "You're not _breeding_ anything; you're just altering what's already there!"

"And if you think armies are what you need to win, you don't understand anything about humanity," the Doctor said, looking up at a camera and hoping that he was correct in his estimation of K9's abilities compared to the technology they were dealing with. "The most ordinary person can change the world, wherever they're from or what they are! People just need to find the right ideas, get the right idea… maybe even find the code for the emotional inhibitors that made all your Cybermen good little drone-slaves!"

" _My children_ -"

"Are _nothing of the sort_!" the Doctor protested. "Children are meant to grow and challenge you; you're turning humanity into nothing more than metal zombies, controlled by the secrets held in Lumic's database, under… what was it, Pete; what binary?"

"Binary Nine," Pete said, looking uncertainly at the Doctor.

"Binary Nine!" the Doctor said, grateful that the Cyber-Lumic was just watching him rather than trying to stop him; once again, he was faced with an intelligent man who underestimated everyone else's intelligence. "And any silly tin dog could find that code and turn it on its source if they had the chance."

" _Your words are irrelevant_."

"I have been accused of talking too much, certainly," the Doctor shrugged. "I always like talking to people; that's why I have this."

Pulling out the mobile phone he'd purchased during his time in Leadworth, the Doctor smiled up at the camera, hoping that Amy or K9 would be able to understand what he was doing; he just needed that code sent to him as soon as possible…

" _You will be deleted_ -"

"You can't _delete_ humans; you can kill us, but you can't delete us, any more than you can _send_ us anywhere," the Doctor added, fingers crossed that Amy and K9 were picking up the clues he was trying to give them. "You might have understood how to win people over by making everything compatible, but you still don't really get what makes the human machine tick…"

He smiled as he heard his phone beep, reaching into his jacket and pulling out the mobile. "Unlike me, who just got _exactly_ what I need to turn your own equipment off."

It was unnecessarily melodramatic, but as he slammed the phone into a docking station in the lab, the Doctor smiled grimly as the code he'd just received in a text was transmitted from this docking station to spread across Lumic's network. As the code flashed over the computer screens, the Cybermen around the room began to scream in agony, clutching at their heads and staggering around. Noting one Cyberman staring at its reflection in a shiny bit of metal on the nearest computer as it made a mournful sound, the Doctor looked at it with a new sense of sympathy, his mind flashing back to that close call when Grant had nearly allowed himself to be converted to avenge his parents before he realised everything he'd be losing…

"I'm sorry," he looked apologetically at the Cyberman, wondering briefly if it had been a man or a woman before this happened. "If I could have done anything else-"

The moment was cut short as the Cyberman's head exploded, followed by the sound of further explosions from outside the lab.

" _What have you done_?" the Cyber-Lumic said in outrage.

"Gave them back their souls," the Doctor glared at the man who'd destroyed his humanity in the name of saving his life. "They're destroying themselves because they can't cope with the horror of what you did to them; what does that say about your goal to save _lives_ , Lumic?"

With those last thoughts imparted, the Doctor grabbed the phone from the docking station and ran out of the lab, closely followed by Natalie, Rose and Pete. The Doctor initially led the way back to the ground level, but that plan was abandoned when he realised that the ground floor was now full of writhing Cybermen, along with the occasional explosion as a Cyberman or their equipment exploded.

"We can't get out that way!" Natalie looked anxiously at the Doctor. "So… up?"

"Up," the Doctor nodded at the ceiling. "If Amy reached the zeppelin-"

As though anticipating the Doctor's words, the phone in his pocket suddenly rang, the Doctor pulling it out and hitting the speaker command.

"Amelia Pond!" he grinned. "How's things?"

" _We've shut the signal off and transmitted the code you sent us, but Jake and Ricky were about to leave the factory_!" Amy explained urgently. " _I thought we could use this to get away_ -"

"Good call!" the Doctor grinned, looking around at the other three before he led the way further into the hall. "Come on; we've got to get to the roof!"

The Doctor was relieved beyond words when he found a metal staircase leading upwards only a short distance from their starting point; it may not be the best way to get up, but it should last long enough for their purposes. Deliberately trying not to think about the increasingly-hot fires that were erupting from around the bottom of the stairs, the Doctor led the way up, Rose briefly taking the lead as they reached the upper floor and had to take a ladder to the roof itself.

When they got to the top of the factory, the Doctor couldn't restrain a proud smile as he saw the zeppelin in motion above them; it might make getting on board the ship a little tricky, but for the moment he could appreciate the sentiment that would drive someone to take control of a form of transport that most would consider obsolete.

" _Amy_?" Natalie looked incredulously at the zeppelin, before grabbing the phone from the Doctor. "How are you flying that thing?"

" _It's Ricky, actually; apparently he got some ideas for how the controls work from a video game_ ," Amy explained, sounding amused at the idea even as she explained it before her voice became more anxious. " _Just… hold on a moment… we can't get too low or this thing might crush you or get blown up… this looks useful_."

As soon as those words had been spoken, a trapdoor opened in the base of the zeppelin above them and a rope ladder fell towards the roof.

"You've got to be kidding," Pete stared at the ladder in shock.

"Get up," the Doctor said, looking urgently between the two Tylers and Natalie, his daughter taking up a position at the back of the group as he led the way. He could vaguely hear Amy saying something about enjoying the flight, but at this point the only thing that mattered was that they were getting out.

With Rose and Pete just below him on the ladder, the Doctor smiled in relief as Natalie began to clamber up the wooden steps, but the joy was suddenly cut short as the ladder experienced a sudden jolt down. Glancing down, he cursed at the sight of the Cyber-Lumic at the base of the ladder, slowly clambering up towards them; he wasn't sure if that meant Lumic's code operated on a different system or if he was just better equipped to cope with the pain of the conversion process after his own illness, but this was a _definite_ problem…

"Natalie!" the Doctor called down to his daughter as he pulled out the sonic screwdriver, relieved and terrified at the realisation that she was at the bottom of the ladder. "Take this; hold the button down and press it against the rope!"

"Gotcha!" Natalie said, stretching out her hand to grab the screwdriver as it fell, before following her father's instructions while glaring down at the screaming Cyber-Lumic. "You wanted to be a machine, Lumic? It's time to shut you down like the glitch you are!"

With those grim words, Natalie slammed her boot into Lumic's face as she cut through the final rope. The Cyber-Lumic screamed in rage as the ladder broke just above his hand, but he was unable to do anything else as he fell towards the exploding factory, his mechanical scream becoming increasingly more organic as he became lost in the inferno that had once been Battersea Power Station.

As he finished climbing into the zeppelin, the Doctor moved to stand by a window as the Tylers and Natalie scrambled in after him, leaving the Time Lord to look at the burning factory below them with a grim smile.

He appreciated that this was an alternate universe, but when dealing with the Cybermen, even if it was only an alternate version of his old foes, it was good to deliver a blow this decisive to them.

_As much as anything can be decisive if Lumic's words were accurate, of course… and I still have to wonder what the Faction were planning when they sent me here in the first place…_


	44. Five New Worlds

As the Doctor and Natalie walked back into the TARDIS, the two Gallifreyans smiled as the Doctor placed the power cell back in the TARDIS console and the console lit up once again.

The Doctor appreciated that this restored power would only be temporary, but it would be enough for him to get through the dimensional barrier and back to his universe, which was the main goal right now. He recognised that there were likely still some Cyber-factories out there on this world, but with Lumic dead and the main factory in London destroyed, it had to have made a dent in whatever automated process Lumic would have set in motion.

Collecting K9 after the destruction of the factory had been a bit trickier than he'd anticipated, but the Preachers had fortunately set up a couple of other safehouses around London, which included one close to a zeppelin landing site. With the city still in relative chaos after everything that had happened, nobody was in a position to complain about the zepplin's arrival, which gave the Doctor plenty of time to trace his way back to his ship while their new allies dealt with a few requests and said their goodbyes to the TARDIS travellers.

"That's it?" Natalie looked at the now-illuminated ship in surprise. "One power cell and we're back in action?"

"It's a short-term solution, unless I conserve power and want to spend a few decades adapting the TARDIS to operate in this universe, but it's enough to get us home," the Doctor smiled at his daughter. "I'll just make sure the coordinates are set properly, and then we can get Amy, Rose and K9 and be on our way."

"Sounds good," Natalie nodded, glancing down at her waitress outfit with a sigh. "I just hope Jake and Rickey can get our clothes back; the sooner I'm out of this, the better…"

* * *

"So… what happens inside that thing, then?" Pete asked, looking curiously at Rose as she, Amy and K9 paced anxiously along the riverbank outside the TARDIS.  
  
"Things you could never imagine," Amy grinned.  
  
"Do you want to see?" Rose asked.  
  
"No, I don't think so," Pete said, clearly still troubled by the recent upheavals in his life as he looked curiously between the two young women. "But you lot… you know, all that stuff you said about different worlds… who are you?"  
  
"We can't really-" Amy began.  
  
"But I can," Rose said, looking solemnly at the man who was her father in another life. "It's like you say… imagine there are different worlds, parallel worlds. Worlds with another Pete Tyler, and… Jackie Tyler's still alive… and their… daughter."  
  
Looking at Pete as he studied Rose, Amy knew that the man was putting the pieces together, and she had a strong suspicion he wasn't going to take it well.  
  
"I've got to go," Pete said, affirming Amy's concerns.  
  
"But if you just look inside-" Rose tried to explain.  
  
"No, I can't," Pete shook his head, feet fidgeting as though he just wanted to run away from this particular talk. "There's all those Lumic factories out there, all those Cybermen still in storage; someone's got to tell the authorities what happened, carry on the fight…"  
  
"Girls?" the Doctor said, stepping out of the TARDIS with a smile. "We've got a few minutes of power; we're good to go."  
  
"We could show-" Rose tried to say again.  
  
"Thank you," Pete said, cutting her off as he turned to shake the Doctor's hand, very pointedly looking everywhere but at Rose. "For everything."  
  
"D-" Rose began, before Amy slapped a hand over her mouth.  
  
" _Don't_ ," she looked firmly at the blonde woman before she turned to look at Pete, already aware of how stupid this was going to sound but lost for anything else to say now. "Uh… Thanks for your help?"  
  
"Thanks," Pete nodded back at the group, before he turned and walked off into the street, moving briskly without actually moving fast enough to be considered rude.  
  
"Here it is," Rickey said, as Rose looked tearfully after the man who'd just walked out of her life all over again. "I found 'em all; not a crease."  
  
"Thanks," the Doctor smiled, taking his tweed jacket and other clothes back from the other man, as the girls did the same.  
  
"You sure you have to go?" Jake asked. "You've been a great help-"  
  
"And we have to be a help elsewhere," Amy smiled apologetically at the young man. "It's… we have busy lives."  
  
"But just one thing before we go," Natalie looked between the two young men. "Mrs Moore's real name was Angela Price; she has a husband and children somewhere out there who deserve to know what happened to her."  
  
"Course we will," Rickey nodded.  
  
"Good luck," Rose said, looking at them for a moment before she swallowed and turned back to the Doctor. "So… back home now?"  
  
"Back home," the Doctor affirmed, looking back at the TARDIS with a smile as K9poked his head out of the door. "We ready there, K9?"  
  
"Affirmative," the robot dog responded.  
  
"Then let's be off," the Doctor said, leading the way back to the TARDIS, Amy and Natalie close behind him as Rose turned to smile at their last allies.  
  
"You sure you'll be OK?" she said.  
  
"We'll be fine," Jake said, as he and Ricky slung their arms around each other.  
  
"After all," Ricky leaned over to give Jake a brief kiss on the cheek, "we've got each other."  
  
"You- oh," Rose nodded awkwardly at the two young men, understanding dawning. "That's… good for… yeah, I'm off."  
  
With that said, Rose turned around and headed back to the TARDIS, shrugging awkwardly at the others as she closed the door behind her.  
  
"Are you OK?" Amy asked, walking over to place a sympathetic hand on the other girl's shoulder, suddenly wondering how she had reached a point where she felt comfortable offering emotional support to someone who couldn't be that much older than she was.  
  
"Just… it's weird, you know?" Rose shrugged. "They _look_ like my dad and Mickey, but Dad's a success and still alive, and Ricky's… well, he's gay."  
  
"Gay?" Natalie asked.  
  
"Someone who has an attraction to their own gender rather than the opposite gender." Amy explained, before looking directly at Natalie in surprise. "You didn't know about that?"  
  
"It… never came up," Natalie shrugged. "I mean, I came from a progenitor machine myself; I was only programmed with the key details of reproduction and sexuality so I'd know what to do if a situation came up where I could use them as a distraction, but we never really thought about… well, sex for pleasure, I suppose."  
  
"And there would have been no reason to give you more than the basic seduction techniques as you weren't exactly likely to use those against the Hath," the Doctor nodded in understanding, even as he set the TARDIS in motion. "We'll have to look into improving that gap in your knowledge once we get home…"  
  
The control room fell silent as the ship once again made its familiar wheezing, groaning side and it took off from that parallel world, the Doctor focusing on the screen as he virtually danced around the console with far more anxiety and purpose than his companions were used to seeing from him. For a moment the three women looked at the Doctor in silence, K9 positioned close to the console as though he was ready to step in and help if needed, and then the TARDIS shook for a moment before the Doctor stepped back from the console with a smile.  
  
"We're back."  
  
"Back?" Amy looked eagerly at the Doctor. "We're home?"  
  
"Well, the old girl's getting power again, so I'm going to assume she's safe and home once more," the Doctor explained nonchalantly, before he glanced down at himself, still wearing the 'borrowed' waiter's outfit from the Tyler party. "What do you say we get back into something more comfortable and then I see about getting Rose home?"  
  
"That's… good," Rose nodded at the Time Lord, before gesturing awkwardly at the door. "I'll just… where's the wardrobe?"  
  
"We'll take you," Amy smiled at the girl as she indicated Natalie. "We need to get changed ourselves."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"There are dressing rooms in that area," Natalie clarified, as she moved to join the other two women. "You'll be OK, Dad?"  
  
"Oh, K9 can keep an eye on things here while I drop this off in my room," the Doctor grinned at the dog. "Just let us know when the scanners give us a location, there's a good boy."  
  
"Affirmative," K9 responded as he moved into position near the console, leaving the humans to head for the changing room.

* * *

"K9," the Doctor shook his head in fond exasperation as he walked back into the console room a few minutes later, once again in his usual bow tie and tweed jacket, "I thought I told you to tell us when we had our location?"  
  
"Affirmative."  
  
"So why…?" the Doctor began, before he looked at K9 with a new sense of anxiety. "You mean… you still haven't determined where we are now?"  
  
"Negative."  
  
"But the old girl's working?"  
  
"Affirmative."  
  
"So what's… going on…?" the Doctor said, voice trailing off as he moved to anxiously study the console. "Oh, this isn't good…"  
  
With K9 moving back from the console, the Doctor began to anxiously study the ship's readouts, his expression shifting from straightforward concern to an ever-growing sense of fear and apprehension.  
  
"What's up?" Amy asked, as she and the other two walked into the console room a few minutes after the Doctor, Rose and Natalie back in their original clothes while Amy was now wearing tight black trousers and a leather jacket over a red top.  
  
"We're not in the universe."  
  
"What?" Rose looked at the Doctor in fear. "You mean we're stuck again?"  
  
"No," the Doctor shook his head. "We're not exactly in another parallel universe, and we are _close_ enough to our home universe for the old girl to have some power, but we seem to have landed on… no, we're _in_ … the null time zone over a collection of alternate universes."  
  
"Pardon?" Amy asked.  
  
"What?" Rose said.  
  
"Null time zone?" Natalie repeated. "What does that have to do with alternate universes?"  
  
"I think I've told you and Amy how alternate timelines can diverge from the core universe at certain bifurcation points with either minimal consequences for the original history or erasing the old timeline completely depending on how it's handed?"  
  
"Yeah…" the two women said, looking uncertainly at each other for a moment while Rose just looked between the other three travellers in confusion.  
  
"Well," the Doctor continued solemnly, "a null time zone is essentially the moment created when a new timeline comes into existence, which lasts until the universe essentially decides whether it splits off or replaces what was to happen. In the majority cases, that moment just lasts for a few seconds at most and are relatively undetectable, preventing other time travellers from going back to those specific bifurcation points so that they can travel into the new or old universes, but in this case… well, I'm not sure _how_ it happened, but it looks like we've become caught in the moment of null time after the split occurs but before they can completely separate from our original universe."  
  
"They?" Amy asked. "As in we're dealing with more than one?"  
  
"Five, to be exact," the Doctor affirmed.  
  
"The universe split into _five_ different parallel timelines?" Rose stared at the Doctor in shock.  
  
"Or something made these timelines split off," the Doctor clarified. "The original universe is still out there somewhere, but I need to work out where these came from so I can trace a suitable path back to our universe…"  
  
"Just to check," Amy cut in, "if these five universes are _all_ in this 'nether universe'… maybe something created them basically all at once?"  
  
"That's-" the Doctor began, before he paused and gave a more thoughtful nod. "Actually, that _could_ happen… it looks like they all diverged from different points, if someone had access to time travel and knew exactly where and when to go…"  
  
"The Faction?" Rose asked anxiously.  
  
"Taking advantage of our absence and the weakness caused by you saving your father; good guess, Miss Tyler," the Doctor nodded. "The Faction were able to trap us into that universe because it was the new timeline specifically created by your actions, but in the hours we took to fix it, it created enough of a weakness in the time vortex for them to create these five other universes…"  
  
"Hold on; _Rose_ created that universe?" Amy asked incredulously. "But the zepplins-"  
  
"A consequence of inexperienced time travellers weakening the continuum to a far greater extent because they don't know what they're doing; the details aren't important," the Doctor interrupted even as Rose looked particularly uncomfortable at that revelation. "What is important is that I need to take a quick scan of these realities to work out what…"  
  
His voice trailed off as he took in the results of the scan, staring at the results in horror.  
  
"No…" the Doctor said, stepping from the console, staring at the screen with an expression that seemed to combine dread and hope in a manner Amy had never seen from him before. "It's… that's impossible…"  
  
"What?" Amy looked curiously at him. "What is it?"  
  
"Gallifrey."  
  
"Gallifrey?" Rose repeated, as Amy and Natalie exchanged glances. "What's that-?"  
  
"My home planet," the Doctor said, still looking at the console with a face that seemed to be fighting itself to choose which emotion to express. "It… it's still there…"  
  
"It's there?" Amy looked at the Doctor, before her eyes widened in understanding. "You mean it still exists _now_?"  
  
"Yes…" the Doctor said, looking at Amy with a briefly tearful smile before he shook his head and refocused his gaze on the scanner. "But that… it doesn't make sense… _Four_ realities where Gallifrey exists? They're the only ones… no reason they'd want _that_ …"  
  
"Four?" Natalie interjected. "I thought you said we were dealing with five new realities?"  
  
"There are." The Doctor's expression seemed to settle on grim dread as he looked back at them. "The fifth reality features a time vortex that is essentially on the brink of collapsing in on itself, which likely includes Gallifrey having been destroyed in the process."  
  
"Collapse?" Amy repeated. "But… OK, I get that I'm not the experienced time-traveller here, but didn't you tell me once that the Vortex was basically the fifth dimension of our universe? As in, if we lose it it's like taking out the cement from a house?"  
  
"And the whole house comes tumbling down, which in this case means that universe ends…" the Doctor nodded, his attention refocused as he studied the console. "I don't know how it happened, but something in that reality must have committed acts of such irresponsible temporal contamination that the vortex itself couldn't take it… and now, just after their creation, these other four universes are caught in the event horizon of that universe as it starts to collapse in on itself."  
  
"Event horizon?" Natalie repeated curiously. "Isn't that something you find in black holes?"  
  
"It's the best term we're going to get for what we're dealing with here," the Doctor clarified solemnly. "If we can't find out what caused this reality to be pushed so far, then all four of these universes are going to collapse into themselves when that one finally gives up the ghost, and it may end up drawing our own universe into it in the process."  
  
"Right…" Amy swallowed anxiously before shooting the Doctor a hopeful smile. "Still, no pressure, right?"  
  
"So… how do we do this?" Rose asked. "I mean, if your home planet's in these other realities-"  
  
"Not practical," the Doctor cut her off. "My relationship with the Time Lords was always a bit flexible; when I don't know what's different about these worlds, I can't be sure if going to them would make things better or worse."  
  
"You mean they might try and… lock you up or something?" Amy asked. "Because they might just _think_ you're the… you… from this universe?"  
  
"And even if they know I'm not the local me, they could decide to lock me up for entering another universe in the first place; there are too many bad possibilities for me to risk it with these stakes," the Doctor noted grimly. "I spent the first few years of my third incarnation stuck on Earth with my knowledge of how to even operate the TARDIS removed because my people were punishing me; the only times I made any trips in her were either explicitly facilitated by the Time Lords or the result of exceptional circumstances that I couldn't use that often…"  
  
He shook his head and turned back to the console, thoughtfully tapping a few controls. "In any case, in our current position, it's probably safer to make a more long-range assessment before we decide on our next move rather than go straight to Gallifrey."  
  
"Long-range… I'm sorry, are you suggesting that you're going to scan these entire _universes_ to find something useful?" Amy asked incredulously.  
  
"I've got a fairly good map of the original universe in the old girl's records; it's mostly a case of scanning for anything that doesn't fit what I know and then mapping that against anything that might be useful in these circumstances," the Doctor explained. "So long as we're careful to stay away from Gallifrey it shouldn't be too hard to find someone who _can_ help us, considering they're unlikely to be looking for us; if we assume that these other mes didn't diverge from me too much… ah-HA; _gotcha_!"  
  
"Gotcha?" Natalie repeated curiously.  
  
"One world with a temporal signature in the time vortex that's very similar to the TARDIS but with a far greater amount of artron energy," the Doctor grinned. "Don't know how that happened specifically, and the time vortex here isn't entirely stable either, but if we can make contact with the Doctor in that one before he materialises anywhere, we should be able to use the artron excess to keep the old girl sustained while we explain the situation to him and work out what to do next."  
  
"So we won't just land there and get stuck?" Amy asked urgently.  
  
"No," the Doctor nodded reassuringly even as he began to move around the console making adjustments. "And I've even managed to get a few details about the other three worlds out there, particularly focusing on where my counterparts might be at this point; if this Doctor's TARDIS has enough power to start with, and Gallifrey exists in all of these realities, we should be able to at least remotely access the Gallifreys' Eyes of Harmony to jump time tracks and get to those other universes to get some help…"  
  
He threw the final switch and the TARDIS shuddered, Amy joining the Doctor in keeping a tight grip on the console while Rose held on to the bar on the edge and Natalie ducked down to stop K9 rolling off his wheels. After a few moments where the TARDIS seemed to be a boat caught on a rough sea, the ship levelled off and the Doctor stepped back to activate the monitor, smiling politely at the screen.  
  
"Hello!" he said with a broad grin. "This is the Doctor, calling who I sincerely hope is also the Doctor; can you hear me?"  
  
After a few moments of anxious waiting, the blank monitor screen came to life, revealing the solemn figure of an old man wearing a tweed jacket over a black shirt. The Doctor noted that this man bore a surprisingly strong resemblance to his original body, but the face seemed longer and the hair was obviously shorter than his first incarnation, so he was going to tentatively assume that this Doctor had regenerated at least once."  
  
" _Hello_ ," the man said, looking at the screen in a particularly pointed manner that betrayed his scepticism. " _This is… the Doctor; who is_ -?"  
  
" _Grandfather_?" another voice said from the monitor, as an older woman with short dark hair and a lined face stepped forward to stand beside the old man. " _Who is_ -?"  
  
" _Susan_?" the Doctor interrupted, staring at the screen with a renewed sense of awe and barely-suppressed joy. "Is that you?"  
  
Glancing over at the confused expression on Natalie's face, Amy felt like slapping her forehead.  
  
Of all the things for the Doctor to forget to tell his daughter… she appreciated that he had only told _her_ about Susan to reinforce the risks she'd be taking if they travelled together, but it was still a pretty serious thing to forget about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To answer any immediate questions, the five realities the Doctor and his companions are about to visit (and I have a clear reason why they're doing this now beyond 'I wanted to write this', I assure you) are the five alternate realities witnessed in _Doctor Who Unbound_ , a series of six 'What If' audio adventures released for the show's fortieth anniversary that looked at how things might have unfolded if the Doctor's life had turned out differently at key moments. If you haven't heard the audios, details about each 'What If' will be revealed as appropriate, but for the moment, I'll just state that the missing _Unbound_ is 'Deadline', as that basically looked at a man who would have been involved in writing _Doctor Who_ in a world where the show was never aired, suffering from delusions of being 'Doctor Who' himself as a means of escaping the failure his life had become; for obvious reasons, it didn't really fit the scale of what I intend to explore for the next few chapters.


	45. Meeting the First Alternate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some spoilers here for 'Auld Mortality', as well as the novel 'Lungbarrow', which depicted some details of the Doctor's departure in flashbacks (I'm skimming over some of the details of Susan's origin from 'Lungbarrow' to keep the storyline simple, but nothing that really impacts the overall plot)

" _Who are you, my boy_?" the old-looking Doctor said, looking curiously at the monitor. " _You claim to be me, but I… I must confess that I don't see it_ …"

"Mainly because I'm not _you_ in that sense," the Doctor explained as he smiled at the old man. "Assuming that I'm right about you, anyway; I take it that you stole a TARDIS and left Gallifrey to explore the universe?"

" _With Susan here, naturally_ ," the Doctor on the screen explained, indicating his granddaughter with a smile before looking at the screen in a more pointed manner. " _Which does not explain what_ you _are doing here_ …"

"Look, this is going to become _extremely_ complicated, and I'd rather explain it in person rather than over a monitor," the Doctor explained. "Shall I come over and explain things to you?"

"… _If you wish_ ," the other Doctor said, exchanging a brief glance with Susan before he looked uncertainly at the young man. " _What coordinates_ -?"

"Just stay put," the Doctor cut his other self off. "I'll be in your ship in a moment."

As the Doctor ended the call, he turned his attention back to the console, once again moving rapidly around the six-sided controls to flick switches, turn knobs and adjust levers, culminating in the glorious moment when he pushed the dematerialisation lever and sent the ship on its way.

"Where are we-?" Amy asked as the ship began to shake.

"I'm aiming for the local Doctor's TARDIS while it's still in the vortex," the Doctor explained. "Tricky manoeuvre, but the Master and I did it to ourselves once or twice; with the amount of artron energy coming from this chap's TARDIS, it's easy enough to find it."

"Right…" Natalie said, virtually hovering between being ready to grab the railing and being ready to grab K9 as the TARDIS rocked around while flying towards its destination, until the ship came to a halt.

"We're there?" Rose asked.

"We're there," the Doctor nodded at his newest companion. "In advance, I'm sorry we won't be able to get you home any time soon; as you can imagine, when five potential universes are at stake-"

"I get it," Rose nodded at him, swallowing slightly. "Got to save the day, eh?"

"Affirmative, Mistress Rose," K9 put in.

"Well, let's do this," Amy said, walking up to the TARDIS door and opening it, smiling tentatively as they found themselves in a large white room with a gleaming white console in the middle of it.

As the only one who had experienced the design in question, the Doctor soon identified it as a near-exact replica of the TARDIS console room the ship had possessed when he originally took it from Gallifrey, but this room included a couple of desks in the corners that were covered in handwritten sheets of paper, along with something near the door that looked like a large chamber of some sort, its door open to reveal a narrow area just big enough for someone to stand inside it. Standing on either side of the console was an old man and a middle-aged woman, the old man just slightly taller than the Doctor and the woman about the same height as the Time Lord Amy was familiar with, the woman wearing a simple dark dress as she looked curiously at the Doctor.

"Hello Susan," the Doctor smiled as he walked up to the woman.

"Grandfather?" the woman looked curiously at him.

"Pretty much," the Doctor nodded at her with a smile. "I mean, I will stress that I'm from an alternate timeline, so there's no guarantee he'll ever look like _me_ , but you…"

He shrugged slightly as his smile grew warmer, almost reaching up to touch her face before he stopped himself. "You look so like my Susan…"

"And where is she, mmm?" the other Doctor asked, looking inquiringly at Amy, Rose and Natalie. "One of these three, regenerated like yourself?"

"Ah… no," the Doctor shook his head, smiling awkwardly as he stepped back from Susan to look at his other self. "We… parted company; it was time for her to make a life for herself beyond just hanging around with her old grandfather in this battered old box-"

" _Grandfather_?" Natalie looked between Susan and the Doctor in shock. "She's my _niece_?"

" _Niece_?" Susan looked at the young blonde in shock. "You… you're grandfather's _daughter_?"

"Ah, _technically_ ," the Doctor shrugged awkwardly. "There was a whole thing involving my DNA being taken by a progenation machine and Natalie here being created before I knew what was being done to me…"

"You never knew about me?" Susan looked at Natalie suspiciously before she turned to the Doctor. "You _never_ told her?"

"Look, it's been a long time since we travelled together back home, and- seriously, what I did or didn't tell your alternate timeline niece about your alternate timeline self is _not_ important right now!" the Doctor waved his hands urgently, shooting a brief apologetic glance at Susan before he turned back to his other self. "We have a serious problem we have to deal with immediately; your universe and three others are caught up in the temporal event horizon of a collapsing reality that's going to take everything in your worlds down with it if you don't help me stop it!"

"Really?" the other Doctor looked at his alternate self curiously, shoulders tensed with apprehension at that news. "What caused this?"

"I'm still working it out," the Doctor shrugged, before looking at his other self. "But if we're going to stop this, one of the first steps is establishing how your timeline differs from mine so I can map out how and when it diverged, so is there a reason the old girl looks like this and you're travelling with Susan when she's… I mean, no offence, Susan, but you look a bit older than when we travelled together in my world, so what changed?"

"Really?" the other Doctor looked at him with a thoughtful smile. "Maybe the divergence was that early…"

"You mean when we left Gallifrey?" the Doctor asked. "What happened here?"

"Should I assume that you went through with your plans to depart Gallifrey with Susan when you originally decided to do so?"

"Yes…" the Doctor nodded tentatively, before looking at his other self with new curiosity. "And you didn't, I take it?"

"That's… complicated," the old man said with a shrug. "I'm still not completely clear on what happened- it's been a few centuries and the circumstances were blurred from my memory- but from what I've since learned, Quences stepped in before I left."

"Quences?" the Doctor raised an eyebrow. "He was able to stop you?"

"Quences?" Amy, Rose and Natalie looked curiously at him.

"The head of our family home back on Gallifrey," Susan explained, a bitter edge to her voice.

"Query," K9 put in. "This unit's information on Time Lord familial dynamics of that nature is lacking; what would this make Quences to the Doctor-Master?"

"It might be simplest to think of him as _my_ grandfather," the Doctor noted, before looking uncertainly at his older-looking self. "So if Quences stopped you… would that have anything to do with why you regenerated?"

"Mmm?" the other Doctor looked at the bow-tie-wearing Doctor in surprise.

"Why you regenerated," the Doctor repeated, indicating the other man's appearance. "Granted, that's not what _I_ looked like in my second body, but we've lived such different lives I feel safe assuming that had something to do with it, considering that you're still early in your regeneration cycle but you've definitely done it at least once."

"You can tell that?" Amy looked at 'her' Doctor in surprise.

"Not normally that precisely, but when I'm dealing with my alternate self, I have… certain advantages," the Doctor shrugged, before he turned back to his other self. "So you never left Gallifrey because of Quences; what did he do?"

"Well, he wanted me to take political office to further his own ambitions for our family," the other Doctor said, rolling his eyes dismissively at the memory. "I doubt that we are so different that we have a contrasting view on the political process?"

"It's… not a progression that ever appealed to me," the Doctor nodded. "I mean, I _did_ become president a couple of times, but that was because I was basically forced into it out of a lack of better options, and I got out as soon as I could pass my duties onto someone else…"

"I never went in for it myself," the Doctor said dismissively. "I was content with my own work as a writer and some further research into probability theory, creating a series of novels that met with great acclaim among the general populace."

"You were a writer?" Amy looked at the old man with a smile.

"Whose works were very popular," Susan smiled. "My own grandchildren love them."

" _Your_ grandchildren?" the Doctor and his companions looked at Susan in surprise.

"I never-?" Susan began.

"You had a child the last time I saw you," the Doctor said, his tone solemn as he studied his granddaughter. "It's… been a while; I shouldn't say more."

For a moment the console room fell silent, the Doctors and their companions exchanging awkward glances, before the younger-looking Doctor clapped his hands together with a smile.

"Anyway," he grinned at his other self, "it sounds like that was the diverging moment for our realities; I got away when I was planning to leave, and you got dragged back and likely forced to regenerate to try and ensure you went along with Quences' plans for you?"

"Most likely," the other Doctor nodded.

"Who'd have thought it?" the Doctor smiled. "I actually owe _Glospin_ something…"

"Glospin?" the other Doctor looked at him in surprise. "That arrogant idiot? Why would we owe _him_ anything?"

"Oh, he tried to frame us for Quences' death by taking a DNA sample from us and using it to regenerate into our double before he killed Quences," the Doctor explained nonchalantly. "Maybe your version of Glospin never got the nerve to do it before Quences caught you, but it basically sounds like I got away in my reality because he kept everyone too busy to realise I was gone until it was too late…"

He looked thoughtfully at his other self. "In any case, since you're out and about now, I take it you got over Quences' influence?"

"It turned out he died of old age a while ago, so Susan assisted me in destroying the vessel he'd used to maintain his consciousness," the Doctor shrugged. "We departed, and… well, here we are."

"Barring a few mistakes," Susan said, a slight edge to her voice as she looked at the old man.

"I have already apologised for those, my child; I believe we both agreed that those do not matter so long as I avoid repeating my errors?" the other Doctor looked pointedly at Susan.

"Errors?" the Doctor looked curiously at his other self. "What kind of 'errors'?"

"Taking Leonardo da Vinci on a few trips, giving Beethoven a hearing aide, warning the Aztecs, saving the Princes in the tower-"

"Saving the who?" Rose asked.

"It came up in _Richard III_ and _Blackadder_ ," Amy clarified, before she looked at the Doctor. "Hold on; didn't you tell me that you save the Princes yourself?"

"I took them to safety, anyway," the Doctor clarified solemnly, before looking at his other self. "You seriously gave _Beethoven_ a _hearing aide_?"

"I hardly thought it would do much harm-"

"Maybe he deserved to hear his concerts, but that didn't give you the right to change something that fundamental about his character just because you think you know best!" the Doctor cut him off. "And giving Leonardo da Vinci the chance to see alien technology? The man was a genius when he was in the fifteenth century; how did you honestly expect him to see alien worlds and _not_ change things once he got back? I mean, I assume it _did_ change things later?"

"He reverse-engineered the technology he saw when we visited the Ore that allowed ships to travel via astrodynamic principles derived from harmonies of the Spheres," Susan clarified.

"That's… odd?" Amy asked.

"Leonardo Da Vinci was a truly exceptional human intellect," K9 observed. "With access to suitable resources, it would not be impossible for him to develop such resources."

"True," the Doctor said, looking at his other self with a frustrated shake of the head. "Well… I suppose it could be worse."

"You 'suppose it could be worse'?" the other Doctor looked at his counterpart with new indignation. "And what gives you the right to-?"

"I might _look_ like the younger of us, but I'm a few centuries older than you and I've experienced more even if we don't fixate on how you started travelling later than me; _that_ gives me the right," the Doctor cut his other self off, before he shook his head with a sigh. "That said… even if I can't say I'm entirely _happy_ with your track record, I can understand how it happened."

"Mmm?"

"To be blunt, you're overcompensating for not getting out there earlier and you have some trouble stopping yourself treating this like your latest novel," the Doctor explained, his manner unusually serious for this incarnation as he looked solemnly at his other self. "You spent so long living in your imaginary worlds where you could make little tweaks to things and control the consequences that you don't seem to have fully appreciated the reality of those actions now that you're away from Gallifrey and dealing with real people."

"I have never _intended_ to act as though these are still my characters-!"

"And I'm not saying you're doing it on purpose, but it sounds like you need to recognise that shift on more levels than the obvious," the Doctor explained. "I can give you a few pointers before we leave if you want some insight into what you might need to do later, but for the moment, we have to focus on the bigger problems."

"Quite," the other Doctor said, looking at him with an expression that the Doctor considered almost worryingly neutral, before he smiled. "And if this crisis is what you describe, this may prove useful in our efforts to determine our next move."

"The probability generator?" Natalie asked. "How would that help?"

"I presume you have studied the other worlds caught up in this particular dimensional rift?" the old Doctor explained with a smile. "If you provide us with that information and link it to your ship's databanks, we may be able to determine where these other realities diverged from yours and thus work out the best way to act when we arrive there."

"But I thought that-" Susan began.

"Of _course_!" the Doctor smiled. "You used the generator to explore probabilities when writing your stories; you think we can put this generator in reverse to assess where the other worlds are now in their history and then compare it to my world to work out how they differ from mine?"

"Like… you working out the middle of a story when we've only got the beginning and the last few pages?" Amy asked.

"Precisely, my dear girl," the other Doctor grinned at her before turning to his other self. "You're certain that these other worlds all diverge from yours?"

"As sure as I can be."

"Then this is our best chance to get a clearer picture of the situation before we enter these other worlds," the old-looking Doctor affirmed. "Shall we begin?"

"So long as you let _me_ supervise the data input process," the Doctor said. "I'm willing to give you pointers, but even allowing for the unconventional situation, I'm not _entirely_ comfortable giving you too much information that might relate to your own future…"

"Of course, of course," the older Doctor nodded in understanding at his other self with a smile. "Let's get to work."


	46. History Unbound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In advance, to confirm what's coming up, when the Doctor, Amy and Natalie travel to the alternate worlds identified in this chapter, they will arrive at the moment the audios 'Full Fathom Five' and 'Exile' ended; Rose will visit the reality witnessed in the audios 'Sympathy for the Devil' and 'Masters of War', but some time after the events of both of those adventures, so the exact events won't be explicitly referenced

"Are you sure this is safe?" Amy looked uncertainly at the modified probability generator, which was now linked to the console of the alternate Doctor's TARDIS and the ship she was more familiar with, two large cables running from the generator to the two TARDISes.

"Affirmative," K9 said, the robot dog's ears connected to electronic clips that linked him to the generator. "Scenarios have been processed and probable courses generated; I have identified the apparent points of divergence for our three alternates."

"Really?" the other Doctor looked at K9 in surprise. "This quickly?"

"K9's good at what he does," the Doctor shrugged. "It got on my nerves at times, but it's useful at moments like this."

"Affirmative."

"So…" Natalie looked uncertainly at her father and his alternate self for a moment, "if we're trying to reach your other selves… how is this going to help us do that?"

"Well, my TARDIS is currently mapping out the other realities with the help of the probability generator, so once that's done, K9 can relay the information on how these worlds differ from my own and we can use the generator to create doors to the TARDISes of my local counterparts in the other universes," the Doctor explained. "Assuming that I'm still alive there, we can then make contact with my other selves and work out a means of making contact with that fifth reality despite the temporal collapse it's experiencing-"

"And if you're not?" Amy asked anxiously. "I mean, if you're not alive in those other worlds?"

"We look for Gallifrey in those realities and hope for the best."

"I acknowledge that this is not a perfect plan, but it is the best strategy any of us have right now," the older-looking Doctor nodded solemnly at his counterpart. "Susan, K9 and I can maintain the connection through your TARDIS while you travel to the other worlds through…"

There was a sudden wheezing noise, and Amy turned around to see three new doors suddenly appear in the TARDIS console room, between the probability generator and the main door of this ship.

"Through those?" she looked back at the alternate Doctor.

"Precisely," the other Doctor nodded. "The probability generator has been used to create objects and even people in our world in the past; these doors serve as representations of the transitional process necessary to send others to these worlds you have identified."

"It should get the job done, anyway," the Doctor shrugged, before looking over at K9. "How's things at your end?"

"The points of divergence have been identified, Master."

"Good boy," the Doctor grinned at the robot dog sitting beside the console room. "What are they?"

"Two of the three worlds diverged around the time when you were sentenced to exile on Earth and regenerated for the second time," K9 reported. "In one, sentence was carried out, but you regenerated into a different form compared to the one you assumed in our universe and arrived on Earth in 1997 rather than 1970. Following your arrival, you were soon able to restore the TARDIS to working order and departed Earth in the company of Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart."

"I travelled with the Brigadier?" the Doctor grinned. "Good on that me."

"The Brigadier?" the elder-looking Doctor asked curiously.

"An old soldier I'm proud to consider one of my best human friends and the only man I'd ever be willing to think of as my boss," the Doctor grinned at his other self before looking back at K9. "So all's safe there, I take it?"

"Affirmative."

"Well, that's one world in good shape; what about the other one where my exile changed?"

"In the second world, you escaped Gallifrey before your trial and hid on Earth after regenerating into a female form."

"I- hold on, you mean you _can_ become a woman?" Amy looked at the Doctor in shock.

"It's possible," the Doctor shrugged. "Some Time Lords like the variety of it; personally, I admit that I've generally been one of those stick-in-the-muds when it comes to my regenerations…"

"We don't change from what works, mmm?" the elder Doctor suggested, before looking at the dog. "How did that work out for her?"

"After recognising that she cannot remain in hiding on Earth, the mistress is about to undergo dematerialisation after the Time Lord agents recaptured her and took her back to Gallifrey."

" _Dematerialisation_?" the two Doctors and Susan looked at K9 in horror.

"Uh… isn't that just what happens when the TARDIS goes somewhere?" Amy asked, even if their reactions had already confirmed that there was another meaning to it.

"In this context, it refers to the harshest punishment the Time Lords can deliver," Susan said solemnly. "If an individual is sentenced to dematerialisation, their entire history is erased."

"Oh," Amy said, mind briefly wondering what something like that would be like before deciding she didn't want to know. "Uh… not meaning to sound selfish, but if you went to that world as she triggered something like that, would that mean-?"

"It wouldn't affect _me_ if I went there, but it's probably best that we get to that reality before she does anything too drastic," the Doctor said. "How will sentence be carried out?"

"She has been returned to her TARDIS, which will erase her from history the moment she attempts to travel anywhere in it," K9 explained.

"But knowing me, she won't accept being stuck all over again, so she'd take a chance rather than accept being trapped in the old girl now that she's trying to get moving again," the Doctor mused, nodding thoughtfully before turning his attention back to K9. "OK, so that's two worlds where my exile turned out differently; what happened on the third?"

"It is… complex," K9 reported.

"In what way?" the elder-looking Doctor asked, looking curiously at the robot dog.

"This reality appears to have diverged from our own during the time when I returned to your company," K9 answered, which at least assured the Doctor that K9 was going to avoid mentioning Gallifrey's fate back in his own universe. "The exact details are hard to determine, but based on the data that I have been able to interpret so far, your other self in this world has spent the last three decades trapped on Earth in his ninth body after being separated from his TARDIS, and has recently found his way back to the sea base where he lost it, only to regenerate after being shot by a woman he had betrayed."

"Betrayed?" Natalie asked. "How-?"

"Something we'll need to establish as swiftly as possible," the Doctor said firmly, studying the three doors for a moment before he nodded firmly. "Right then, I'll take the Doctor who's just been sentenced on Gallifrey and make sure she doesn't dematerialise herself; Rose, you can talk to the alternate third me who just left Skaro, and Amy, you and Natalie should probably go to this deep sea base-"

"You mean the base where somebody's _shooting_ your other self for betraying her?" Amy asked anxiously.

"Natalie can protect you from whoever that woman is until you can make her realise that killing me doesn't make sense; I have faith in you both," the Doctor said, expression solemn as he looked around the TARDIS. "Doctor, you, Susan and K9 stay here and keep everything in order so we don't lose the links; once we've explained the situation to the other mes we'll need to be able to use these two TARDISes as a meeting point to coordinate our trip into that other world."

"…Very well," the other Doctor nodded in acknowledgement at his counterpart. "Good luck, my boy."

"Same to you," the Doctor said as the four turned to look at the portals in front of them. "Let's go."

Walking up to the door, the Doctor could only hope that this plan was going to work out; travelling to other universes was complicated at the best of times, but deliberately setting out to meet his other selves in those universes directly was a dangerous prospect no matter what the situation…


	47. The Woman Exile

Walking along the corridor on the other side of his chosen door, the Doctor wondered if he should be ashamed at how a part of himself was actually enjoying this experience.

He wasn't going to let himself forget the stakes of what he and his friends were dealing with right now, but when his past experiences with parallel universes had been relatively brief ones where his counterpart was either dead or strongly implied to have become a dictator, it was intriguing to consider what he would find here when going to a world where he had reason to believe his counterpart was still alive and morally aligned with his own agenda.

_Granted, I don't know for sure that they aren't more psychotic alternates, but it doesn't hurt to hope when I don't know otherwise…_

"Right," the Doctor heard a female voice say as he reached the end of the corridor, a door on the other end looking like something he'd find in his original TARDIS console room. "Here we go, old girl. I suppose that note was genuine…"

"It wasn't," the Doctor said, stepping out of the door and aiming the sonic screwdriver at the central console. As sparks leapt from the console, the figure standing beside it jumped back as the time rotor ground to a halt mid-motion. Closing the door behind him, the Doctor studied the figure that could have been his third incarnation, a slightly overweight woman in a knitted black-and-white waistcoat and a red velvet jacket with shoulder-length brown hair, who was looking anxiously at him.

"Who-?" the woman began.

"I'm the Doctor," the Doctor smiled at the woman as he tucked the screwdriver back into his pocket. "And so are you, I take it?"

"…Yes," the female Doctor nodded, anxiety shifting to uncertainty as she studied him. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm you from a parallel universe."

"I don't know if that's better or worse than the alternatives."

"When you've been in the kind of positions I've been in over the course of my many lives, you learn that extreme measures can be required to deal with extreme solutions," the Doctor said, looking over his female counterpart for a few moments with a thoughtful smile before giving an experimental sniff and adopting a more serious expression. "Sorry if I'm wrong, but… are you drunk?"

"I _was_ drunk a while ago," the female Doctor shrugged tentatively, placing a hand on her head as she winced. "I mean, in my defence I was trying to get information out of someone and I didn't realise he was one of the Time Lord agents trying to catch me-"

"And how did anyone reach a point where they could get _you_ drunk?" the Doctor cut her off. "I appreciate that some of me aren't as good with alcohol as others, but- oh, you _didn't_ …"

"I knew going into this body that I'd have to blend in with everyone else, and that meant that… well, I'd have to let some things affect me more than I might have done if I was still… well, being _me_ ," the female Doctor admitted, leaning over the console with a sigh. "It wasn't my best call, but in my defence, I was trying to get over it even before this all happened; I was getting back to the old girl when I ran into those two-"

"I don't need the details of how you ended up _like_ this, Doctor," the Doctor held up his hands; he appreciated that this woman had stopped being him at the time of his first trial, but it was still uncomfortable to think about how such a small decision could have led to him living the life that this Doctor had experienced. "What I need to know now is what happened to lead to this mess we're in right now? I mean, I don't deny I tried to get away from Gallifrey when I was faced with being put on trial back in my reality, and I can understand going into hiding if I pulled it off, but staying on Earth without the old girl to avoid being sentenced?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time?" the female Doctor replied, before she sighed in frustration. "And I know how self-centred that sounds; I already spent the last few hours kicking myself for getting stuck in this screwed-up mess because I couldn't just admit that it was safer hiding away, but I triggered my regeneration to make it easier to hide and then… well, it just got easier to stay hidden rather than risk getting caught all over again."

"Disadvantage of making a big decision immediately post-regeneration," the Doctor mused. "It's like… well, drinking; never commit yourself to something big when you're drunk, but give yourself a day or two to sober up and think on it."

"And I'm pretty sure I suffered some kind of psychotic break in the process, considering that I've spent the last few days talking to… _someone_ in the mirror who talks like he's my previous self but definitely isn't the little Beatles tramp…"

"Oh, you were him too?" the Doctor smiled, before waving a dismissive hand. "Probably just some manifestation of yourself trying to talk to you; I assume it mainly happened while you were drunk?"

"And depressed or frustrated with myself."

"Probably just your way of reminding yourself not to keep making this kind of mistake and get back out there," the Doctor affirmed.

"Well, I've spent the last few months thinking I'm an idiot, so it's probably a reasonable guess," the female Doctor affirmed. "I spent months working in a supermarket using Susan's forged identity documents because I forgot to work out something better before I left the old girl in a field somewhere, and drinking just became a good way to avoid my mind being stuck in a loop and avoid thinking too much about what I'd given up…"

"And stop yourself recognising that hiding away like that was basically just doing the Time Lords' work for them?"

"That too," the female Doctor conceded with an uncomfortable grin before her gaze faltered as she studied the console room. "And now they've sentenced the old girl and I to dematerialisation…"

"Not if I can help it," the Doctor nodded at his other self, before looking apologetically at her. "Although I _should_ establish that I'm also here to ask you for your help in dealing with something that could potentially endanger five different universes, and will require you and I to work with three more of us to stop it."

"I… see," the female Doctor nodded tentatively at him before she swallowed and shrugged with a disarming grin. "Well, I'm never going to get back in the game if I don't aim big."

"Good," the Doctor nodded at his counterpart, before he walked up to the TARDIS doors and walked out into the empty chamber set aside for the dematerialisation, glaring up at the ceiling. "Attention Time Lords of Gallifrey; as ex-President of the High Council of Gallifrey of another dimensional plane, I demand an audience with the agents responsible for the capture of the Doctor!"

He didn't have long to wait before he felt himself being transmatted from the dematerialisation room to a decently-sized office, looking scathingly at the two Time Lords sitting behind their desks in the usual ornate robes, one man with a weathered-looking face and grey hair and the other bearing a remarkable resemblance to the Doctor's own immediate predecessor.

"Right then," the Doctor said, walking up to glare at the two Time Lords sitting behind their desks, dismissing the other man's resemblance to his predecessor as an unusual coincidence, "would you care to explain _why_ you decided to dematerialise the Doctor rather than go through with the original sentence of exile?"

"Who are-?" the older-looking Time Lord began.

"As previously stated, I'm from another universe," the Doctor said, hoping that his impulsive plan was going to work. "If you'll check my biodata, you'll find that I was once President of the High Council, and while I resigned the position in order to pursue other interests as a special operative for our people in the field, I think you'll confirm that my Presidential privileges were never completely deactivated."

"I…" the younger-looking Time Lord said, awkwardly tapping out instructions on a nearby keyboard before he looked at the Doctor with a new sense of awe. "You… you _are_ from another dimension… these presidential codes… but why-?"

"For obvious reasons you shouldn't ask for details," the Doctor said. His time as President of Gallifrey was a complicated issue for him, considering why he'd originally taken on the role in his fourth life and how everything had gone when he was forced to actually do the job in his fifth body, but if it gave him an advantage right now he wasn't going to complain. "Consider how serious this must be if the Time Lords of my universe felt that it was important enough to send me to talk to you about this."

"…Fair point," the younger-looking Time Lord said, looking uncertainly at the Doctor. "So… what do you want?"

"Spare your Doctor."

"Ah, now that's quite-" the younger-looking one began hesitantly.

"What; it's 'quite out of the question' to spare the Time Lord whose only crime since leaving Gallifrey has been to step in and save lives who might have died without her intervention?" the Doctor cut the Time Lord off (he had to hope that K9's estimates were accurate and his life only diverged from the other Doctor's at the moment of the trial after the War Games, or he might compromise his image). "There's something wrong with the idea of letting the Doctor continue to do what she's been doing since she left Gallifrey? I appreciate that the likes of Mortimus, Koschei and Ushas didn't do our reputation any favours when they got out there, but tarring the Doctor with the same brush just because she went out into the universe as well is just stupid and insulting. I mean, did any of you even bother to _look_ at the evidence before you decided to erase her, or were you just a bit put out at the way she tricked you by escaping again?"

"And we had to spend time on Earth-"

"Where you were treated like idiots and had a rough time of it?"

"How did you know?" the younger Time Lord asked.

"If you're not trained for it, blending in to foreign times and places can be a headache at best," the Doctor observed with a slight smile. "I mean no offence and I'm sure you're reasonable people, but you're not really the best candidates for field work, am I right?"

"…Fair point; have to agree with that," the older-looking Time Lord conceded awkwardly. "But as for the Doctor making a difference out there… well, we've looked at some records of her experiences, and frankly the Quarks were a bit stupid-"

"The _Quarks_?" the Doctor cut the old man off indignantly, unable to believe the example they were trying to use to justify their decision. "You're judging what the Doctor accomplished out in the universe based on the _Quarks_? What about the fact that the Doctor played a key role in saving the survivors of Sarath when its moon was going to crash into the planet and their own actions almost made things worse? How about the Doctor's success in stopping the Daleks from using the Time Destructor by stealing the Taranium core, or when the Doctor triggered a Dalek civil war by reprogramming a mass of Daleks with the Human Factor? I take that ensuring that Koschei wouldn't get his hands on the Darkheart means nothing to you people? Were his two defeats of the Animus on Vortis completely irrelevant?"

"The Animus?" the older-looking Time Lord asked.

"You might know it better as the Lloigor," the Doctor clarified. "One of the Great Old Ones, if that jogs your memory? On that topic, the Doctor also stopped Yog-Sothoth from conquering Earth twice, and came extremely close to destroying him for good during the second confrontation before unpredictable events interrupted that effort."

"Really?" the younger-looking Time Lord looked at the Doctor in curiosity. "The Doctor did all that?"

" _Exactly_!" the Doctor grinned encouragingly at the two Time Lords, before adopting a more solemn expression. "Look, I understand that certain parties are probably in favour of getting the Doctor out of the picture, but have you considered that there are advantages in having someone like the Doctor out there?"

"Someone… like the Doctor?" the older man repeated tentatively. "A woman who ignored official summons and embarrassed everyone by running away, forced us to attempt humiliating efforts to get her attention on Earth, took pride in defeating the Quarks-"

"Firstly, she can't exactly be held responsible for what any of you did trying to capture her, and secondly, your Doctor had a uniquely poor reaction to her regeneration; I'm not saying that it excuses what she's done with her life, but if we judged every Time Lord for life-defining decisions they made after traumatic regenerations we wouldn't get anywhere," the Doctor observed, folding his arms as he looked between the two. "Whatever happened to her that led to her spending time on Earth, I have faith that she can be more than what she's been to you so far; you can't just decide to execute her because certain people find her escape humiliating! If you judge your Doctor based on what's happened since you put her in a bad position, you miss out on a chance to gain an agent who can be of _great_ benefit to your people in the future."

The two Time Lords looked uncertainly at each other for a moment before turning back to the Doctor.

"You… make an… interesting argument," the older Time Lord said at last, looking tentatively at the Doctor. "But still, after all the trouble the Doctor has caused us… the way some of the higher-ups feel about this… we can't just _forgive_ her…"

"And I'm not asking you to let her off _completely_ ," the Doctor affirmed. "What I _am_ asking you to do is commute the sentence while she assists me in dealing with an outer-dimensional threat that I believe she is uniquely qualified to assist me with. If I'm right and she helps me pull this off, then you'll have sufficient justification to confirm that the Doctor's past efforts weren't just a fluke and you can make the argument to the High Council that exile is the best approach after all; if what I need her help with doesn't work, then you'll all be dead anyway and she'll have died first."

"That's not-"

"Of course it's not encouraging, but if it was an easy situation it wouldn't let you justify sending her off to deal with it," the Doctor clarified. "We're dealing with a danger that's without precedent for this reality, and my world has operatives who are… more experienced in doing things the Doctor's way, which makes her the best person from this world to assist with the problem."

"…Well…" the older Time Lord said at last, "your biodata codes seem authentic… If she comes back, I suppose we could claim that the Doctor was on Earth acting an undercover operative to look into something before the sentence of exile became official…"

"Keeping it sufficiently vague that nobody will ever be willing to admit that they don't actually know who arranged that sentence?" the Doctor grinned at the older man. "Good call."

"Although it might be easier to sell if that if she isn't a 'she' when she comes back," the younger Time Lord observed. "No offence, but that doesn't set a good precedent…"

"I'll keep that in mind," the Doctor said. "Although for the record, changing gender mid-regeneration isn't such a big deal back on my Gallifrey; it's just something that some people decide to do."

"Oh," the older Time Lord said with a new sense of uncertainty.

" _Anyway_ ," the Doctor clapped his hands together, wanting to get them back to the topic at hand without worrying about that particular issue, "the end result is that you're willing to let me take responsibility for this and take the Doctor off your hands for the moment, and you'll just let her go on the original sentence of exile if she comes back after this?"

"…Of course," the younger Time Lord nodded at him. "I mean, to be fair, she seemed pleasant enough, but she did break the rules…"

"The phrase 'I was just following orders' has been used to justify many atrocities across the cosmos," the Doctor looked warningly at the Time Lord who resembled his predecessor. "I'm not saying that Gallifrey is guilty of that yet, but if you've spent time on Earth recently, I think you should recognise that things get complicated when you're out in the wider universe."

"Don't I know it…" the older Time Lord muttered, before he sighed in resignation and waved a hand at the Doctor. "I'll have the dematerialisation system in the Doctor's TARDIS restored to full working order by the time you get there; take her where you wish, so long as she's back here as soon as possible."

"Thank you," the Doctor nodded at the older man as he walked out of the room. "And I'll be checking the TARDIS's status when I get there!"

He didn't think that either of the Time Lords he'd just spoken to would lie to him deliberately, but considering how some of his people had their own agendas, he had to take care when it was his other self's life on the line.

Still, for the moment, while the Time Lords' fixation on bureaucracy and inability to improvise might have been a frustration to him before the Faction destroyed Gallifrey, the way he'd convinced them to go along with this agenda at least assured him that his political knowledge was working in his favour.

_Now I just have to hope that she's not so out of practice she'll be a danger to this particular operation…_


	48. The Darkest Doctor in the DEEP

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As we enter the timeline of 'Full Fathom Five', I will concede to taking a few personal liberties in terms of how and when that reality diverged from the one we know, as the only thing we know for certain is that the Doctor in that reality revealed at he had used up 'most' of his lives by the time of the audio. For simplicity's sake, I chose to interpret that to mean that the 'FFF' Doctor has used over half of his regenerations at least, and took it from there to assume that he diverged from canon at some point after the time of the Eighth Doctor we're familiar with, which would also justify why he didn't just call the Time Lords for help while he was stuck on Earth.
> 
> In the end, my conclusion is that the FFF Doctor as portrayed by David Collings was a Ninth Doctor who regenerated on his own at some point after the destruction of Gallifrey in 'The Ancestor Cell'; other details will be provided later.

Amy wondered if she'd ever get completely used to just how strange her world had become since that fateful day when the Doctor had landed in her garden for the second time. In the last few days alone, she'd witnessed a young woman trying to change her own history and travelled to a parallel universe by accident, and now she was travelling to her third parallel universe in just as many days to try and stop someone shooting an alternate version of her… mentor.

 _God, why can't I even be honest with_ myself _about that_?

The frustrating part of it was that the bigger the TARDIS crew got, the more awkward it became for Amy to even consider the idea of bringing up her deeper feelings for the Doctor. She wasn't entirely sure if K9 had the emotional capacity to be bothered about how awkward something like that might be or if he was just a robot who was certain of his own abilities, but the knowledge that the Doctor's daughter was present…

Granted, Natalie had never _had_ a mother, which made it unlikely that she'd resent Amy for 'replacing' anyone if Amy ever got the nerve to try and ask the Doctor if he would like to take things further, but that still left the bigger question of what she should consider Natalie in that situation. Right now, as they walked along the corridor that would lead them to this other Doctor, Amy was keeping her ears strained as she approached the door that would lead them to this new reality, fighting down the small part of herself that still couldn't believe her life had become this incredible…

"…nobody regenerates into a new body," a voice said as Amy opened the door, revealing a dimly-lit metal corridor on the other side. The voice had a trace of a thick American accent, but it also had a sickly, distorted sound to it that put Amy in mind of someone trying to talk through a layer of mucus.

"After all I've seen, I'm not sure anything's impossible," a young woman replied, a grim edge to her voice that Amy didn't like. "The Doctor said he had thirteen lives; that he'd already used most of those. If he was telling the truth, I want to be ready."

"Look!" the distorted voice said, as Amy heard a strange, unfamiliar sound fill the corridor up ahead. "It's starting!"

Amy began to move around the corner, but Natalie grabbed her arm and shook her head, forcing Amy to acknowledge the other girl had a point; right now they didn't know enough about what was going on here to step in and introduce themselves in the middle of a regeneration…

"Hello," a third voice said, sounding innocently curious. "I'm the Doctor. Who are you?"

"Ruth," the woman said bitterly. "Goodbye."

The sound of a gunshot filled the base again, followed by a sound that Amy was certain was a body hitting the ground.

"One down," the woman who was apparently Ruth said. "I wonder how many lives this bastard has left."

"You're not going to find out," Amy said, walking out from around the corner to stare at the trio in the corridor. The girl who had just spoken was a woman with long dark hair that had a slight curl, apparently a few years older than Amy and Natalie appeared to be, wearing a simple blue dress and holding a gun, standing over a figure in a long red velvet coat wearing a large bow tie.

"Who-?" the girl began.

"Why would you-?" the other voice said, prompting Amy to jump back and yell in shock at the sight of something standing behind the woman. At first glance it looked vaguely human, wearing the tattered remains of green clothes that could have been an army uniform, but as it moved forward Amy could see that its head was more like a twisted mix of a lizard and a fish with a human, its face stretched back as though something had been trying to tear its hair off from the back and patches of skin mixed in with scales. Even more disturbing, while one of its sleeves had just been subject to standard wear of someone wearing clothes for a long time, the other sleeve had been virtually torn off, revealing an arm that Amy could best think of as a thick fin with claws on the end.

"OK, what the _Hell_ are you?" Natalie said, shifting into a combat stance as she raised her fists at the man-fish-thing.

"Wait a minute…" Amy said, holding up a hand to stop the man responding as her gaze shifted past the girl and the man-fish-thing to take in the form behind them, its face and hands now glowing gold in a manner that Amy 'recognised' from some of her mentor's brief discussions of regeneration, confirming her tentative earlier identification. "Doctor!"

"What- you're here for _him_?" Ruth yelled, raising the gun even as Amy ran past her to crouch down beside the glowing figure. As the glow faded, it revealed a man who struck Amy as being at least a decade older than the Doctor she knew (physically at least; she reminded herself that the Doctor hadn't specified on the different ages of his counterparts), with long thick curly brown hair, a face that somehow mixed weariness and joy even when he was asleep, and a reasonable build under clothes that seemed just a little bit tighter than they would have been when this man put them on in the first place.

"He's unconscious, but he's OK," Amy said, before she turned around to find the unknown woman glaring at Amy as she raised the gun again. Before Amy had time to do more than worry about what the woman would do next, Natalie had stepped in and kicked the gun out of the other woman's hand.

"We're _not_ doing that again," Natalie said, now in a combat stance as she stared at the woman and the mutated man, the gun lying just too far down the corridor for either of their opponents to get to it before Amy or Natalie could stop them. "Now can you please tell us why you're trying to kill the Doctor?"

"You want _us_ to explain to _you_?" the man-thing said incredulously in his strange distorted voice. "You show up here-"

"And we'll explain that once _you_ explain why you want the Doctor dead," Amy interrupted, glaring firmly at the creature. "And on that topic, who are you and what happened to _you_?"

"I am… I was… General George Flint," the man-thing said, looking solemnly at Amy. "I was… a scientist in my employ was conducting experiments in genetic engineering in this base, and when I came to see the results of his work…"

"Let me guess, the Doctor stepped in because he objected to the project?" Amy asked, resisting the urge to smile at the confirmation that this Doctor shared at least that important trait with his counterpart back home.

"True," Flint nodded, a bitter edge to his distorted voice. "A chain of events led to me being infected with mutated DNA from one of our…test subjects, and the Doctor killed the scientist who had been carrying out the experiments while leaving me for dead."

"OK…" Natalie nodded at Flint, taking that statement on board before looking at the woman. "And where do you come into this?"

"My father was down here working on alternative energy sources while his assistant Lee conducted research for the military," Ruth explained, her gaze still coldly fixed on the unconscious Doctor behind the other two women. "The Doctor made contact with my father posing as a friend of one of my father's associates, and came down here to investigate what was going on, but his presence provoked Flint into using my father as a test subject for Lee's serum because they thought my father had told the Doctor more about the work than he actually had."

"I… see," Amy said, looking over at Flint. "And why did you think that?"

"A strange man shows up in our base protesting about the ethics of our experiments and not answering any of my questions about how he got here; I obviously assumed he was here for some ulterior agenda with aid from the professor," Flint replied, although his solemn tone suggested that he had some regret over what had happened. "Lee and I injected Professor Vollmer with Lee's serum while trying to get the Doctor to talk, but when I was elsewhere saving the data, the Doctor killed Lee and I was attacked by Vollmer when he managed to escape the lab as his mutation accelerated."

"The Doctor killed Lee?" Amy asked, ignoring the desire to automatically protest that the Doctor wouldn't just kill someone; she had to remind herself that this was in an alternate timeline where nothing that 'her' Doctor had told her about himself could apply…

"I saw the security footage of what happened later," Flint explained. "The Doctor had concluded that he could spare more lives by killing Lee now and destroying all record of his work rather than just trying to destroy the experiments."

"Which is why he killed my father," Ruth put in.

Amy wasn't sure how to react to that news. She wasn't blind to the fact that the Doctor had been forced to kill in the past when he was faced with an enemy that gave him no other choice, but the implication that there was any version of him that would just _kill_ someone like Ruth's words suggested…

"…You're saying that D- the Doctor killed your father?" Natalie asked, looking anxiously at the woman. "As in… are we talking about Professor Vollmer?"

"My father's mutation had stabilised and he thought it might be possible to find a cure for it, but that… that _bastard_ just decided to shoot my father anyway!" Ruth said, angrily gesturing at the unconscious newly-regenerated Doctor. "He gave this little speech about how he couldn't take the risk that someone would use my father's mutation to recreate Lee's work, but he didn't even bother to _try_ and help him-!"

"OK!" Amy said, holding up her hands before Ruth could get more caught up in her story. "Clearly this is a… difficult topic for everyone, so if I can just clear up a couple more details, we'll… try and answer your questions?"

"…Fine," Ruth nodded in grim resignation.

"If the Doctor killed your father, what happened here after that?"

"I had set the base to self-destruct and hidden the key to the Doctor's blue box," Flint explained with a grim chuckle. "He was forced to flee the base after he killed Vollmer, but the Doctor was unaware that I had deactivated the main explosives after he left the base; with the dirty bombs outside having contaminated the surrounding water, everyone on the surface assumed that the base had been completely destroyed. I remained here for the next few decades, waiting for the background radiation to die down to a point where the Doctor would learn that this base still existed so that he could come to recover his box."

"That… makes sense," Natalie said, exchanging a tentative glance with Amy before she looked at Ruth. "So… how did you find out about all this?"

"The Doctor had promised my father that he'd look after me if Dad didn't make it out of here," Ruth explained, looking bitterly at the still-unconscious Doctor. "For some… _sick_ reason, even though he's the one who _killed_ my dad, he decided to try and keep that promise in his own way, spending the next few decades keeping an eye on my mother and me until he got news that this place wasn't totally destroyed. He told us he was coming down here to find proof about what happened here all those years ago, but when I followed him down he was just trying to destroy all records of Lee's work even if it might have proved that my dad didn't have anything to _do_ with what happened down here!"

"OK," Amy nodded. "So… to be sure we're all on the same page, if Flint had someone conducting genetic research down here, what was Professor Vollmer's project in this base?"

"Dad was trying to find alternative energy sources while Lee was carrying out the military's genetic experiments," Ruth explained, shuddering slightly. "I saw some of Lee's earlier results…"

"Not pretty, I take it?" Amy asked grimly as she glanced over at Flint. "Let me guess, the real reason the military funded something like this was so that Vollmer's alternative energy research could be the public face of the project while Lee did his genetic research?"

"Essentially yes," Flint nodded at her. "Frankly, we were more interested in the immediate results of Lee's work than the theoretical long-term benefits of Professor Vollmer's."

"Not any more?" Natalie looked at him with a cool stare Amy recognised from when her father was talking about someone who'd realised their mistakes too late. "I take it we can attribute that to you staying down here for several decades looking like… well, I'm thinking of _Creature from the Black Lagoon_?"

"It… made me think," Flint conceded. "I spent all this time able to stay alive by focusing on my desire to get revenge on the Doctor, even if I could never understand how he had done any of this, but I had to concede… if we'd just stopped the experiments, things would have been so very different… not that we would have cared about that at the time."

"Because your soldiers were just a bunch of yes-men?" Natalie asked.

"My soldiers got things done-" Flint began with a new edge to his tone.

"I was created to be a soldier in a pointless war," Natalie cut him off, looking coldly at the mutated general. "If I'd just gone along with what they wanted me to do, we would have kept on killing each other and nothing would ever have changed, but when the Doctor helped me become something more than just another drone, we ended that conflict in under an hour. Unless you let soldiers imagine and strive to be more, all you'll get is an endless cycle of violence that reaches a point where you don't even remember why you started it."

"The Doctor did that?" Flint looked curiously at the young blonde, his defensiveness replaced by a new sense of curiosity.

"He… he stopped a _war_?" Ruth looked at Natalie incredulously. "Without killing anyone?"

"Not even the general he thought had just killed me," Natalie nodded. "He even explicitly stated that he would _never_ do something like that."

"He thought someone had killed you?" Ruth repeated.

"And he _didn't kill that man_ ," Natalie repeated, looking at Ruth to make sure the other woman understood her point.

"And… and I should _believe_ that?" Ruth said, looking at the two women with a tremble in her stance. "He spent years lying to me that he knew nothing about what had happened to my father, and when I found out he told me he'd wanted to protect my memories of him-!"

"Maybe he really believed that," Amy interrupted Ruth, looking at the young woman with a solemn expression. "If I've learned anything from my time with the Doctor, it's that we all have moments where we might _want_ to kill someone, or think we're capable of killing someone; what distinguishes most of us from the Doctor's enemies is that we'd never _do_ that. The Doctor you know took a more extreme approach than the one I'm familiar with, but I have to believe that he's still the same person at his core."

"You think he's capable of being… like that?" Ruth asked, a twisted expression on her face as though she wasn't sure how to feel about hearing that other story about the Doctor's history. "When he killed my father 'just to make sure'?"

"I'm not saying that the Doctor you know made the right call when he killed Lee, and he was _definitely_ wrong when he killed your father, but there are times when even the Doctor we know decided that killing someone was the only way to stop more death later," Natalie said.

"That said," Amy put in, "the Doctor we know would _never_ have killed Lee like that; from what you've told us, Lee sounds like he was more of an eager idiot than actually _evil_ , so the Doctor we know would have at least given him a chance to repent rather than just shooting him as a first option, and he would have taken the morality of the choice into account before he made it-"

"So you think the Doctor wouldn't have done this when you knew him just because he was _different_ back then?" Ruth protested. "He _admitted_ that he _killed my father_!"

"And you just admitted that you're standing next to the man who _caused_ all this crap in the first place; why does _he_ get a free pass?" Natalie interjected, shooting a cool glare at the other woman. "Flint's experiments are the reason this all happened in the first place, and you're letting him off just because he's basically said 'sorry'? You've already killed the man who killed your father; didn't you learn _anything_ about regeneration?"

"The Doctor told me that he gets a new body when he dies-"

" _And a new personality_!" Amy interrupted, looking indignantly at Ruth. "Every time the Doctor changes after he dies he gets a new personality and a new perspective on the world; maybe the one you grew up with was willing to be more ruthless to do what he thought had to be done, but who's to say that the one you just _killed_ would have been like that?"

"He still remembers what he did-!"

"And that automatically means he's going to keep doing it even after he's regenerated?" Natalie asked, looking coolly at her. "The Doctor's told us stories about his past lives, and some of his other selves don't always approve of what their predecessors or successors have done when looking back or forward at their other actions; this Doctor's resorted to more extreme actions than most, but you don't deserve to decide that he should die for good just because of that!"

"He was going to kill the man who brought him down here just to make sure everything stayed secret, and he pretty much admitted that he was going to kill _me_ even after he'd spent the last thirty years acting as my guardian!" Ruth protested. "And if I _hadn't_ come along with him, he was just going to clean up the loose ends and abandon me once he had his precious… _TARDIS_ back!"

"How can you be sure he was going to leave you without any answers?" Amy asked, forcing herself not to start yelling at this woman who was clearly grieving and exasperated at what the Doctor she knew had done to her life. "Did he actually _say_ that was his plan, or did he just ignore your question and keep going on about what he felt he had to do?"

"You think that he can be forgiven?" Flint looked at the two women with a slight smirk as Ruth stared at them in silence. "After everything he did-"

"Even at his worst, we'd take the Doctor over you any day," Amy told Flint with cold resolution. "This one might have been ruthless, but even if he was more extreme than the Doctor we know, he still only killed because he felt like he was in a situation where that was the only choice; you arranged for twisted genetic experiments to be carried out in the name of some abstract future war and act like you're above the 'liberals' who actually _care_ about people."

"And Ruth," Natalie looked back at the girl with a softer smile on her face, "if the Doctor really didn't care about you, based on what you've told us about these events, he could have just stayed out of your life and you'd never have known he even existed. I'm not saying it completely excuses everything he did down here, but you might want to keep that in mind before you start acting like he's just a monster you can kill."

"He…" Ruth said, looking awkwardly between the other two women. "He stayed because… he only did that to make himself feel better-!"

"Which _also_ proves that he's notthe monster you want him to be," Amy affirmed. "The Doctor you shot might have had a very rigid view of things, but he did everything he could to keep you safe, even if it was from his own twisted perspective; if he was a monster he could have just left you and your mother alone and kept you completely ignorant that he even existed."

"And that makes it _right_?" Ruth said, even if the trembling expression on her face made it clear that the other women had made an impression on her.

"We're not saying you have to forgive him," Amy looked solemnly at Ruth. "We're just asking you not to kill him for his past before he can become a better man. If this new Doctor is anything like the Doctor we knew, he will spend every moment of his life working to make up for what the Doctor you know did to you and your father."

"And anyway," Natalie added with a particularly cool stare at Ruth, "if you kill the Doctor, aren't you just doing the same thing you're angry at him for? Assuming that you know everything about the situation and that you have the right to make snap decisions about life and death for other people?"

"But I _know_ he did something wrong-!"

"And he knew that Lee had done something wrong; did that automatically make it right for the Doctor to kill Lee?" Amy countered.

For a moment there was silence in the corridor, each group glaring at the other, until Ruth lowered her gun as she stared at Amy and Natalie.

"…How can I just… ignore this?" Ruth asked, looking tearfully between the other two women. "What he did… he destroyed my dad's reputation…"

"And you have the files you need to confirm what really took place down here," Flint said, in a tone of voice that Amy would have called soothing if it had come from anything else. "I have already had my revenge on the Doctor who set off the events that led to me becoming this; what you do next is your own decision."

"Nice way to pass the buck," Amy noted, glaring at the former general before she sighed. "Look, I reiterate that we're not here to make you forgive the Doctor; we're just asking you not to kill him because of what he did in a previous incarnation."

"…Fine," Ruth said at last, looking down at the still-unconscious Doctor with a bitter edge to her expression before she looked back at Amy and Natalie. "I'm not saying that I _forgive_ him, but if I… I'm not going to _be_ like him."

"We can accept that," Amy nodded in understanding.

"So if he came down here for the TAR- the blue box, where is it and where's the key?" Natalie asked.

"The box is back there," Flint indicated a door further down the corridor. "And as for the key… I made the Doctor swallow it before I broke his neck."

"OK," Amy winced as she exchanged glances with Natalie. "Well… we can use our keys to get him into the ship and take it from there."

"Your keys?" Ruth asked.

"Our keys to the TARDIS," Amy said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out the relevant key. "We can get the ship out of here and take him somewhere where he can… get his mind together."

"What about you two?" Natalie asked. "I mean, we could give you a lift-"

"I can… take the station's evacuation submersible," Ruth said, the way she looked at the fallen Doctor making it clear that she wasn't willing to spend more time with him than she absolutely had to, regardless of Amy and Natalie's appeals on his behalf.

"And I… have plans," Flint said, in a foreboding tone that left Amy and Natalie certain they didn't want to know what Flint was planning to do even as the solemn nature of the words suggested to them both that he wasn't going to do anything to innocent people.

"OK," Amy crouched down to pick up the unconscious Doctor. "Natalie, let's get this guy out of here and start giving him some _serious_ therapy to get his head on straight."

She just hoped that everything she and Natalie had said about the Doctor still applied to this one; as confident as she was that the behaviour Ruth described was just a 'temporary glitch' that only applied to this incarnation, she couldn't forget that she was dealing with an alternate Doctor rather than a younger or older version of the Doctor she knew…

Maybe he wasn't the Time Lord who'd come to mean so much to her, but she couldn't bring herself to let him die when she had the chance to do something that might help him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, the new Doctor depicted here should be envisioned as being portrayed by Alan Davies, best known as the titular character of _Jonathan Creek_ ; he'll need a bit of time before he's able to do anything more than lie around and recover, but I thought I'd clear up what he looks like before we go any further into the plot.


	49. The Fourth Alternate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here I introduce the fourth and final alternate Doctor that my TARDIS crew will gather to help them face their latest threat.  
> For the record, once all the Doctors are together, the term 'the Doctor' will be used to refer to the Eleventh Doctor we're all familiar with; terms of identification for the Unbound Doctors will be established as appropriate, and they may not all be referred to as 'Doctor' all the time, but I hope it will be sufficiently clear who's who.

Standing in front of the door that would apparently lead her to an alternate version of the TARDIS, used by an alternate version of the Doctor, Rose wondered how her life had come to this point so quickly.

She'd barely spent a few days in the Doctor's company when they'd run into each other during that mess with the Autons when he'd been an older man in a leather jacket, but he'd remained in her mind as one of the most defining experiences she'd ever had, even if she'd subsequently found it hard to work out how to properly move on. She could recognise that her deal with the Faction had been a bad idea even if she could argue that she'd legitimately known nothing about the temporal implications of it all, but just the idea that she could have changed her history had been so tempting…

 _I can't change anything_ , she reminded herself. _My history back home's set, and I can't do anything to change it… but I can do something to change this… fix whatever's happening here before it gets worse_.

Her mind made up, Rose reached out and opened the door, walking into a white room that put her in mind of the TARDIS in the same way that Kirk's _Enterprise_ resembled Picard's in the later series (and she had no idea how she should feel about the fact that she'd spent enough time with Mickey to make that kind of analogy). Standing at one side of the console room was a tall white-haired man with a thin face and swept-back greying hair, wearing a dark suit with a ruffled shirt and a cape.

"Hello?" the man looked at her with a thoughtful smile, a cautious edge to his tone even as he seemed primarily curious rather than afraid. "Who are you?"

"Are… you the Doctor?" Rose asked, wanting to be sure of the situation before she said anything she shouldn't.

"Yes," the man said, still looking thoughtfully at her. "But that doesn't answer _my_ question."

"I'm Rose Tyler," Rose smiled awkwardly at the older man. "I… well, I'm here to get your help."

"Really," the man who was apparently the Doctor said, looking at her with a quizzical expression. "And who sent you?"

"Well… technically, you did."

"Me?"

"An alternate you," Rose clarified, wondering if that was the right term to use in a situation like this or if there was some politically correct term she just wasn't aware of. "Long story short, we're dealing with some kind of… reality collapse that's affecting a bunch of parallel worlds, and my Doctor thinks that he can solve it, but he needs help to pull it off, and he thinks you and some of his other selves could help him stop this mess."

"I… see," the Doctor nodded, looking at her for a moment before he smiled. "Well, shall we join me?"

"Just like that?" Rose looked at him in surprise.

"You doubted I would help?"

"No, just… surprised that you believe me," Rose shrugged uncertainly, even as she appreciated the slight smile the other Doctor gave her. "I'm not complaining 'bout it, but-"

"Let's just say that I nearly lost my freedom and lost a lot of chances to help people because of it, and I'm not inclined to waste an opportunity to explore the opportunities of the one and do more of the second," the Doctor explained with that same strangely-familiar smile. "I assume that there's a way back to your reality?"

"Apparently, if you just… track back along my own artron energy signature, you'll find the right route to the reality I just came from," Rose explained, hoping she had the term right.

"Right then," the old-looking Doctor said, turning his attention back to the TARDIS console. As his fingers virtually danced over the controls, Rose heard the ship make the now-familiar sound of materialisation before it shook violently, nearly throwing Rose into the console before she grabbed the edge and held herself steady.

"Hold on!" the Doctor called over at Rose. "This is a rough ride, but we'll be fine!"

Without any suitable response, Rose just kept a tight hold of the console until the TARDIS had ceased shaking.

"Are we there?" she asked, looking anxiously at the new Doctor.

"We're there," the Doctor nodded at her, before he turned to open the door with a nonchalant smile. "Shall we?"

Nodding in agreement, Rose walked out of the control room to find herself in the console room she'd left just a few moments ago, K9 next to the probability generator while the old Doctor and Susan stood alongside the machine. As the other Doctor walked out after Rose, he exchanged glances with his older-looking self, but they didn't have a chance to talk before another police box appeared in the ship, which opened to reveal the Doctor in the bow tie that had brought Rose here, followed by a slightly overweight brunette woman in a knitted black-and-white waistcoat and a red velvet jacket.

"Ah, Rose!" the Doctor grinned at her, before he turned to his other selves. "Doctor, Doctor, Susan, K9, meet the newest member of our little team; the Doctor!"

"Wh- _you_?" Rose looked at the woman in surprise. " _You're_ the Doctor?"

"That's me," the woman nodded at Rose with a brief smile as she indicated the Doctor in the bow tie. "I take it you're a companion of his?"

"…Sort of," Rose said, nodding uncertainly at the woman Doctor, deciding not to go into detail about the true nature of her relationship with him.

"You… you're really Grandfather?" Susan looked at the woman in surprise.

"That's me," the female Doctor nodded at Susan with a warm smile. "But feel free to call me 'Doctor' or 'Grandmother' if you prefer; either works."

"This is going to be an… interesting experience," the former author said, looking at the woman with a tentative smile.

"It has been this unit's observation that many experiences with the Doctor-Master are such," K9 observed.

"A robot dog?" the woman looked at K9 in surprise before she looked at the Doctor. "He's yours?"

"Well, I received the original model from an acquaintance, but I've made a few upgrades since," the Doctor shrugged, as he knelt down to pat K9 on the head while looking at his female counterpart. "He's come and gone over the centuries, but he's always a good friend when we work together."

"Affirmative," K9 said, wiggling his ears.

"In any case," the oldest-looking Doctor said as he studied the newest arrival with a probing expression, "if we are discussing our histories, could you clarify what led to this particular regeneration, my dear?"

"Oh, got caught by the Time Lords, managed to get away before my trial, and ended up hiding out on Earth; changing gender when I regenerated just seemed like a good way to ensure I stayed under the radar," the woman smiled uncertainly back at him.

"You escaped your trial?" the Doctor Rose had just 'recruited' said, looking at the woman in surprise.

"You didn't?" the woman looked at the other Doctor with her own surprise clear on her face. "What happened?"

"Well, I did manage to get away from it fairly quickly, but I ended up being sent to Earth with an inhibitor placed in the TARDIS to restrict its ability to travel in time before I managed to use a nuclear explosion to disable the inhibitor," the new Doctor explained.

"Trial?" the author looked between his other selves inquiringly. "We were on trial?"

"For interfering in the affairs of the universe, which I stress was never about anything more than preventing mass death in any situation where history could cope with that kind of change or tweak in cases where we weren't just meant to be there anyway," the Doctor shook his head in exasperation. "No matter what reality we're in, the Time Lords just have this ridiculous… _need_ to keep an eye on everything as though the universe will collapse in on itself the second anyone steps out of line…"

"You were exiled too?" the new arrival looked at the Doctor in surprise.

"For pretty much the same reasons as you, except that I was there for a few years until I helped the Time Lords deal with a few problems and was granted my freedom as thanks," the Doctor explained. "Which just proves what I said, really; they object to my getting out there when I'm helping people in a manner that _might_ affect history, but they're perfectly willing to rely on my help when it benefits them."

"To be fair to them," the author suddenly put in with a shame-faced expression, "I _did_ make a few mistakes when I went out-"

"Which we already decided was due to you over-compensating rather than you being a bad person who deserves to be punished for it," the Doctor cut his physically older alternate off. "You were impulsive, but you had good intentions and just under-estimated the scale of your influence when you went out there, where I went to great lengths in my reality _not_ to do anything too big unless I was sure I was making it better."

He shook his head and sighed. "All things considered, their sentence of exile was actually fairly lenient."

"Lenient?" the female Doctor looked at him curiously, before she nodded in grim understanding. "Compared to what they were going to do to me, I suppose that's fair…"

"So… what did you do with that time?" Rose's Doctor looked inquiringly at the Doctor, after looking uncertainly at the female Doctor for a moment before he apparently decided he didn't want to know.

"I spent a few years on Earth in the seventies acting as scientific advisor to UNIT," the Doctor smiled.

"With Alistair?" the new Doctor asked curiously.

"You call him Alistair?" the Doctor said in surprise.

"I did travel with him for a while-"

"You _travelled_ with the _Brigadier_?" the Doctor looked at his other self with a new sense of admiration.

"The Brigadier?" Rose looked between the two in confusion.

"Pretty much my oldest long-term human friend-" the Doctor began, before another TARDIS materialised inside the ship. The new Doctors barely had time to react before the doors opened and Amy and Natalie emerged, carrying a figure between them with shaggy brown hair in a long red velvet coat and a white shirt with an open collar.

"Hi," Amy said, waving awkwardly as she took in the new arrivals. "So… I take it the new people are the other Doctors?"

"Even her?" Natalie looked at the female Doctor in surprise.

"I was trying to stay undercover and… well, you could argue that I overdid it," the female Doctor smiled at the blonde. "And who are you?"

"Natalie Kriener," Natalie said. "I'm-"

"We have to help him," Amy cut Natalie off, as she laid the unconscious figure on the TARDIS floor, revealing a weathered face with an expression that seemed to convey pain even when unconscious.

"What happened?" the female Doctor looked curiously at the unconscious Doctor.

"He just regenerated," Amy answered.

"Twice," Natalie added.

" _Twice_?" the other four Doctors looked at their daughter in surprise.

"Affirmative," K9 said, his sensor probe extended towards the newest arrival. "Escalated levels of artron energy support Mistress Natalie's claims that this iteration of the Doctor-Master has recently undergone the regenerative process on at least two separate occasions in rapid succession-"

"What was he doing that made him regenerate _twice_?" the Doctor who had come here with Rose asked, looking curiously at his unconscious counterpart as the four Doctors took up position around the fifth.

"Basically," Amy explained, stepping back and looking patiently at the four conscious Doctors, "it turned out that he killed two people to stop illegal genetic research in a deep-sea research base even when there might have been another way to do it, he spent twenty years lying to the daughter of one of his victims about what had happened, and when she found out what he'd done, someone he thought was dead broke his neck, and then the daughter we mentioned shot him once before we stepped in."

"Ah," the author looked at the figure with raised eyebrows while the other three Doctors winced at the explanation. "Not the most… understanding of my alternates, then?"

" _Exactly_!" Amy smiled in relief at the old man before she looked at the Doctor. "I mean, I figured he'd taken a bit of a knock or this new personality was… OK, a _lot_ more extreme than any of you… but there has to be a _reason_ he's like this, right? I mean, you _all_ don't like the idea of being like him, and… OK, I get that there's a whole 'anything that can happen will happen' theme when we're talking about alternate universes…"

"But it bears closer analysis regardless," the Doctor Rose had brought here nodded in contemplation.

"Shall we?" the Doctor smiled, raising his hands and holding them out to his other selves.

"But be careful," the author said. "We don't wish to compound the trauma of whatever drove him to commit such acts when his mind is already in an emotionally vulnerable state…"

With that warning, the four Doctors closed their eyes and took each other's hands, heads bowed as they stared at the newly-regenerated Doctor before they closed their eyes. After a few moments, the Doctors opened their eyes and stood up, looking solemnly around the room at Amy, Natalie, Rose and Susan.

"Well?" Rose asked the Doctor she'd brought here. "What happened to him?"

"He regenerated," the white-haired man said.

"We already knew that-" Amy began.

"But not that it happened shortly before he first visited that deep-sea research base you told us about," the Doctor corrected her with a slight smile.

"Oh no," Susan said, looking in solemn understanding at the unconscious figure.

"What?" Rose looked at Susan. "I mean, I _think_ I get that regeneration changes you-"

"But it leaves our minds in a psychologically vulnerable state, even before you take into account that this man experienced a psychologically disruptive regeneration during an emotionally traumatic incident," the Doctor explained solemnly. "Without getting into too much detail, before his regeneration this man lost both his travelling companions, and his regeneration cost him a chance to save Gallifrey after a devastating event because he lost all the material he needed to put it all back together."

"Ah," Amy nodded in understanding. "So… on top of what you usually go through when you regenerate, he was probably already kicking himself for failing to save so many people who were so important to him personally?"

"Add in being confronted by a charismatic man like this 'General Flint' in a state like that, and even our traditional hatred of the military mentality will only take us so far," the female Doctor nodded. "With his mind already in a malleable state as his new personality attempted to assert itself, faced with a strong-willed individual like Flint telling him that his methods wouldn't get anything done, he essentially decided to 'test the waters' and just became so caught up in trying something new that he didn't properly realise what he had become until it was too late."

"Almost like what happened to Andred…" the Doctor mused.

"Andred?" the other three looked curiously at the Doctor.

"A member of the Chancellery Guard back in my world," the Doctor explained. "He married a companion of mine, but… well, most of this I only heard second-hand because it all happened while I was spending some time away from Gallifrey, but essentially Andred decided to investigate corruption in the Celestial Intervention Agency by regenerating after he killed one of their agents in a firefight. Andred decided to infiltrate the Agency by claiming that _he_ was the agent and he'd just… well, he claimed that he'd killed himself."

"So… this 'Andred' guy ended up posing as his own murderer?" Amy asked. "I can't decide if that's brilliant or stupid."

"Definitely the second one in this context, Pond," the Doctor nodded at her. "Not only did he destroy his marriage because he didn't consider what the lie would do to his wife, but even after the deception was exposed it took months of therapy to get him to a point where he'd stop sprouting the prejudices of the man he'd been impersonating when he'd never shared those views before he regenerated."

"He became the mask, mmm?" the author mused, before his brief smile faltered. "I'm sorry, that was… I never intended to undermine what your friend must have gone through, married to a man in such a state…"

"It's not important right now," the Doctor said, turning his attention back to the unconscious Doctor. "The important thing is that his mind is calm now, and the last couple of regenerations should have shaken off any of the residual influence of Flint's words; we need to let him wake up on his own, and then we can assess his condition and act accordingly."

"But don't we have-?" Amy began anxiously.

"A few hours aren't going to make a significant difference to what's happening in the event horizon of the Vortex in the fifth universe, and having the four of us here will help him get himself together more quickly," the Doctor explained, as the four Time Lords and their four companions sat down around their unconscious ninth member. "All we can do now is wait for him to feel well enough to take part in this… K9, let us know if things get worse out there, will you?"

"Affirmative," K9 said, his tone unusually solemn for the usually enthusiastic robot dog as he joined the group gathered around the fallen Doctor, even as a series of cables still connected him to the probability generator and the console of this TARDIS.


	50. The Heart of the Collapse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To ensure there's no confusion, this chapter will open from the perspective of the newly-regenerated 'Full Fathom Five' Doctor; just remember that this is a newly-regenerated Doctor portrayed by Alan Davies, and everything should be fine from there.  
> A few references to the Eighth Doctor novel "The Gallifrey Chronicles", which I've tentatively chosen as _the_ moment when the timeline of the 'FFF' Doctor diverged from the canon we're more familiar with, but I won't go into great detail about it

When he opened his eyes, the man didn't know who he was.

He was sure that he had just been talking to someone, but he'd only had time to introduce himself before… what had happened next? There'd been a loid noise, and then… now he just felt so… Rassilon, his _head_ hurt…

He suddenly became aware of a strange presence in his mind, something that he couldn't identify even if he was also knew that he _shouldn't_ have been able to sense it. Looking up, he found himself facing a group of three men and five women of mixed ages, along with a strange shape in one corner that struck him as resembling a robotic dog.

"Hello," the bow-tie wearing man nodded at him before indicating the two older men and the older woman, the latter two apparently talking to each other before he had woken up. "I'm the Doctor, and so is he, he, and her."

"Amelia Pond, Natalie Kreiner, Rose Tyler, and I think you know Susan," the young red-headed woman said, something in her voice striking the man as familiar even if he couldn't place her face directly.

"And I am unit designate K-9," said a robot dog off to the side of the room.

"K-9?" the man repeated, looking at the robot with a new smile. "I… did we know each other?"

"I believe the appropriate response is to inform you that the answer to that question is complicated," the robot dog responded.

"We can sort out how you know K-9 later," the man who had introduced himself as 'the Doctor' waved a hand at the robot dog before looking at the man still lying on the ground. "As for you… what do you remember?"

"I…" he began, raising a hand to his head as he carefully sat up. "There was a base… I was talking to someone… I knew her… she was a little girl when we met… her father was…"

His eyes widened as additional memories suddenly flooded through his mind; the loss of Fitz and Trix as he triggered the destruction of the Vore mountain, the regeneration that had restored his own memories while wiping everything he'd stored in his subconscious, his desperate attempts to find something to do that would prove to himself that he hadn't suddenly become a failure… the way his attempt to investigate events in the D.E.E.P. had gone so wrong so fast…

 _I killed two men just because I thought they_ might _make things worse, and then I was prepared to kill a woman who'd trusted me for almost three decades to keep a secret that she would never have shared…_

"Oh Rassilon…" he said, pressing his hands to his forehead as he bent over on the floor. "What have I done… how could I-?"

"You went through an extremely traumatic regeneration-"

"That excuse was weak when I tried to kill Peri, and this isn't just a few moments of madness when I'm coping with the after-effects of a fatal virus; I deliberately chose to _kill_ two people because I felt I was 'justified'!" the newly-regenerated man spat indignantly at his female counterpart, only to bow his head in shame as he realised what he'd just done. "I'm sorry; that wasn't… I don't want…"

"We understand, young fellow," the oldest-looking Doctor said, walking over to place a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "I won't say we've all been there, because the whole reason we exist is that none of us have the same shared experiences, but we've all shared _some_ of these insights…"

"To say nothing of us being ashamed of what our predecessors have done on occasion," the female Doctor observed with a brief smile. "I mean, I didn't exactly disagree with it after the fact, but I've still thought of my predecessor as a bit of an idiot for running away from his trial like that and leaving me to deal with the consequences."

"I can't just… disassociate myself like that; I _did it_ -!"

"And we aren't asking you to ignore what you've done, but we _are_ asking you to move on from it," the old-looking Doctor in the ruffled shirt said solemnly. "You did the wrong thing, but we all believe that you essentially did it for the right reasons, which affirms that you aren't the monster you could be; you have a new lease on life now, and that makes it your responsibility to atone for what you did in your previous one."

"The life _before_ my previous one," the man added. "And don't try and claim that I didn't deserve to lose that one-"

"What you deserve isn't what matters here," the Doctor in the bow tie said solemnly. "What's important is that you recognise that what you did back on the DEEP was wrong."

"I do," the man nodded.

"And if you were still the man we'd heard about when we rescued you, you'd probably be off trying to justify what you did rather than obviously kicking yourself about it," the red-haired young woman (Amelia Pond, if he remembered correctly) observed with a brief smile.

"In the end," the bow-tie-wearing Time Lord said, staring solemnly at the man who still wore his predecessor's clothing, "what's important right now isn't what you did back in your reality, but what you're willing to do to atone for it."

"Anything," the man said, his tone solemn as he stared around at the faces of the men and woman he could have been and the women who apparently shared something with his other selves, before his gaze focused on the bow-tie wearing man. "You… you're me, aren't you?"

"Well, we all are-"

"No, I mean… you're _this_ me," the man said, placing one hand on his chest as he pointed at the other man. "We're both… the eleventh, aren't we?"

"Yes," the man in the bow tie nodded in understanding. "Best guess… well, from what I saw when we linked minds, your eighth regeneration was so difficult it significantly affected what your body would have done on its own."

"On top of everything else I lost in the process, I suppose that's natural…"

"What else happened?" his female counterpart asked.

"Time enough to talk about _that_ once we've stopped this collapse," the bow-tie wearing Doctor cut her off, clapping his hands together as he looked around the room before his gaze settled on his counterpart. "And on that topic, can I assume that you're ready to help us save the universes, Doctor?"

 _Doctor_ …

He'd spent so many years thinking that title and its associated responsibilities gave him the right to basically do whatever he wanted, letting so many people die during his time at Sunbelt just because they couldn't help _him_ (their plans had been dangerous but he could have worked on helping them find another way)…

"You really want my help?" he looked at his other selves in surprise, amazed to see them all looking at him with such calm acceptance. "Even after… what I did?"

"We forgive others for making mistakes," the Doctor in velvet said with a solemn smile. "Why shouldn't we forgive ourselves?"

"Precisely," the oldest-looking Doctor nodded at him. "If I learned one thing as an author, it's that we must treat all of our characters fairly rather than condemn individuals for not meeting our standards… save for the relevant villains, naturally."

"Right…" the newly-regenerated Doctor said, nodding tentatively at the apparent author before he turned to look at the one in the bow tie. "So what's the situation?"

"I was attempting to return to my world after being displaced into an alternate reality and found that your four worlds are caught in a temporal black hole caused by the collapse of the Time Vortex in a fifth," the Doctor explained. "I brought the five of us together so that you can help me trace the cause of the collapse in that universe and maybe find some way to undo it before it consumes your worlds and then spreads to the rest of the multiverse."

"Ah," the new man said, nodding in brief apprehension before he clapped his hands together and nodded in resolution. "Well, we have a task to complete; let's do this."

* * *

As the five Doctors and Susan moved around the TARDIS console, the Doctor had to admit that so far things had been going relatively smoothly. He wasn't going to pretend that he wasn't a bit unnerved to meet a version of himself who had essentially chosen to hide away from the wider universe, and the newly-regenerated version of himself clearly had more than the usual number of post-regenerative issues to deal with, but at least all of them had the raw potential to be the kind of Doctor he could be proud to associate himself with.  
  
 _No more dictators; it's all just variations of me_ …  
  
"So how do we do this?" Amy asked as the Doctors took up position at a key panel. "I mean, if we're going into a universe that's basically collapsing…"  
  
"It's still intact enough for us to actually travel through it," the Doctor said, assessing some strange display on a screen that Amy knew she'd need far more time to understand. "We'll need to plot our route carefully, which is why we _all_ have to pilot this old girl to take us through any temporal distortions, but if we can find the centre of this collapse we should find a clue to the cause at the very least."  
  
"The centre of the collapse?" Rose asked.  
  
"That's… like the eye of the hurricane, right?" Natalie put in. "It's going to be a calm area in this chaos that we can use to trace the source?"  
  
"If not the source of the collapse itself; without knowing exactly what happened, either could be the case," the Doctor in the ruffled shirt nodded, before he looked around at the others. "So, shall we do this?"  
  
"Indeed," the oldest-looking Doctor nodded at his counterparts with a smile, before he looked over at the new arrival. "Are you ready for this, young man?"  
  
"As I'll ever be," the shaggy-haired man nodded, reaching up to adjust his collar; he was still wearing the velvet jacket he'd worn when he regenerated, but it was clear that he'd be changing to something else when he had the chance to choose his new incarnation's wardrobe.  
  
"I guess that's why they always recommend regenerating in company," the female Doctor observed. "Considering what you got up to before you got shot, it looks like we _really_ made a difference to your mental state… no offence meant-"  
  
"And none taken," the other Doctor replied with a solemn nod before he turned back to the Doctor. "Let's go."  
  
With those words, the five Doctors and Susan placed their hands on the central console and began to rapidly adjust the controls. Natalie and Amy kept a careful eye on the Time Lords from the side, each one ready to step in if they were needed even as they kept their fingers crossed that they wouldn't have to do anything, while K9 remained linked up to the probability generator to help them map the appropriate route through the distorted vortex. For the next few moments the TARDIS shook as they moved from one universe to another, the six displaced Gallifreyans keeping hold of the console while K9 rolled on his wheels to stay in position and Amy and Natalie leaned against the wall.  
  
"Is this normal?" Amy called out.  
  
"When dealing with a disruption on this scale?" the white-haired Doctor asked as the ship suddenly spin to the right. "We're actually doing rather well!"  
  
"We're almost there!" Susan said as she studied the screen on the console panel. "Just one more-!"  
  
As though her words were a cue, the turbulence came to an abrupt halt, slamming the six pilots against the control console and nearly sent Amy and Natalie flying.  
  
"What-?" Natalie began.  
  
"Sensors indicate that the source of this universe's temporal disruption is a short distance from our present spatial-temporal location in the vortex," K9 put in.  
  
"Right," the Doctor nodded as he turned on the scanner. "Let's see what we're dealing with here…"  
  
As the scanner turned on, the five Doctors and their companions turned to assess it. The screen displayed a simple white box that still looked distinctly familiar, floating in the brilliant twisting colours of the time vortex, which the Doctor noted looked far more distorted and rougher than the vortex he was familiar with.  
  
"Is that… a TARDIS?" Amy looked curiously at the Doctors.  
  
"Precisely," the author nodded at her. "In its non-camouflaged state, of course."  
  
"And the… time vortex… shouldn't look like that, right?" Natalie put in.  
  
"Certainly not," Susan nodded grimly. "Something must have done _serious_ damage to the vortex in this universe…"  
  
"And I should note that we aren't just looking at a TARDIS that hasn't disguised itself yet," the female Doctor put in, as she studied a screen on the control console. "According to this, that TARDIS is practically out of power to the point that the circuit's explicitly broken down, and from what I can tell its interior has basically collapsed down to the bare essentials needed to maintain its existence; it looks like the only thing keeping it going is its link to its pilot… and that pilot seems to be _us_."  
  
"You?" Susan looked at her 'grandmother' in surprise. "Does that mean-?"  
  
"It's not like it _has_ to be us who caused all this," the newly-regenerated Doctor observed defensively, before he gave an awkward shrug as his other selves looked at him. "Or if it is… well, I had a rough time of it recently; why shouldn't this just be another one of us who made a bad call at some point?"  
  
"Exactly," the younger white-haired Doctor nodded. "This is… a drastic situation, of course, but I'm sure we can help him sort it out."  
  
"Precisely," the Doctor grinned at his other selves before he moved back to the console. "Now then, let's just see if we can take a look inside that TARDIS; if I can sync up with its viewscreen…"  
  
He tapped away at the console controls for a few moments, until the screen shifted from the vortex to showing the interior of a TARDIS console room. The Doctor wasn't entirely surprised to see the standard white version he'd used for most of his first seven lives- he'd only started experimenting with more varied 'desktops' after his return to Lungbarrow prompted him to try and make the ship more homey- and he gave a brief smile when he saw Melanie Bush in a corner of the room, but that smile faded to sheer horror when he realised who was in the console room with her.  
  
" _Him_?" the shaggy-haired Doctor yelled incredulously.  
  
"Who?" the white-haired Doctor asked, looking curiously between the two oldest Doctors.  
  
"I take it we know that man?" the former author asked, indicating the figure in the black robes lying in the console room beside Mel.  
  
"No…" the Doctor said, staring at the black-robed man in horror, amazed that he hadn't had a heart attack at the sight. "Not him… _anyone_ but him…"  
  
"Why?" Susan looked at the Doctor curiously. "Who is that?"  
  
"The Valeyard."


	51. The Fall of the Valeyard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To clear up a few continuity details, the Doctor and the newly-regenerated Doctor share all knowledge of the Sixth and Seventh Doctors' encounters with the Valeyard from the audio _The Last Adventure_ and the book _Matrix_ , but they only know about the events of 'Stage Fright' out of the full set of _Last Adventure_ , as the Valeyard was undercover for 'End of the Line' and 'Red House' and the Sixth Doctor's sacrifice in 'The Brink of Death' erased the Valeyard's near-victory from history.  
> On that note, this chapter will include dialogue taken directly from the end of the Unbound audio _He Jests at Scars_ , so obviously some spoilers from that audio are included here.

"The Vale- hold on, _the_ Valeyard?" Amy looked sharply at the Doctor, suddenly remembering one of the few stories from his past he'd only shared with her after he'd told her about the Grandfather. "As in the evil future you from your trial?"

"Evil future us?" the female Doctor repeated curiously.

"From our trial?" the younger-looking white-haired Doctor asked.

"Not the trial you remember; a later one," the Doctor clarified to his two alternate third selves before he addressed the entire room. "Long story short, I came close to learning a few potentially embarrassing secrets about certain factions of the High Council in my sixth body, so they somehow arranged for me to be put on trial for 'conduct unbecoming of a Time Lord', with the Valeyard as my prosecutor."

"And he's… 'evil future us'?" the author repeated uncertainly.

"He was identified later in the trial as the physical manifestation of the darkest side of our own nature, created at some point between my twelfth and final incarnations," the Doctor explained solemnly. "I've no idea how he was created or how he ended up existing at the same time as my sixth body when he's meant to have come from my future, but he… well, as you can imagine, even if we managed to defeat him at the time, it wasn't an appealing prospect to imagine that we might become something like that some day."

"Mmm," the newly-regenerated Doctor said, looking at the screen with a sense of apprehensive foreboding the Doctor could only recall feeling during those dark days immediately after the trial.

"So… what happened to him?" Susan asked, looking at the Valeyard on the screen with a sense of apprehension. "I mean, obviously he didn't kill you…"

"Well, we managed to expose his identity and apparently left him to be destroyed in the Matrix by his own equipment," the newest Doctor explained. "There were a couple of run-ins with him later on, but he didn't do anything too serious until after we regenerated, when he managed to possess the Keeper of the Matrix back on Gallifrey and gained control of the Dark Matrix."

"The Dark Matrix?" the white-haired Doctor looked at his other self incredulously. "That actually exists?"

"And for those of us who don't know why that's a bad thing?" Amy asked. "I mean, I take it we're not talking about some variation of the Keanu Reeves film, right?"

"A film?" the author asked with a curious smile. "When was it released and what was it about?"

"Back on our Earth in the late 1990s," Amy explained, smiling slightly at the other Doctor's interest. "Basically, it's a science-fiction film where a man learns that the human race has been stuck in a giant virtual reality simulation for over a century to act as batteries for an elaborate 'race' of machines, and joins a resistance movement against it when he learns that he has the ability to manipulate the virtual reality to a greater extent than anyone else."

"I see," the author nodded with a thoughtful smile. "Actually, the real Matrix isn't that unlike what you described; the difference is that the Matrix on Gallifrey contains the deceased minds of lost Time Lords and is only occasionally visited by the living."

"We keep our dead in a computer?" Natalie asked.

"A recording of their minds taken at the moment of their deaths, at least; there's a distinction that it's probably best not to think about," the Doctor waved his hand at his daughter before he continued his explanation. "Anyway, the Dark Matrix is the part of the Matrix that basically contains the negative traits of all deceased Time Lords, rumoured to have been brought together by their anger at being, well, dead, before it was filtered into a separate section away from the rest of the system. The Valeyard attempted to harness its power and use it to give himself a proper existence, but my seventh self learned what he was doing and managed to provoke the Dark Matrix into trying to escape his control, which caused it to destroy itself and him with it."

"Right," the female Doctor said, looking slightly paler than usual as she stared at the monitor, still displaying the other TARDIS's console room. "Well, obviously we're dealing with a world where you didn't manage to stop this 'Valeyard', but if that's who the man is, do you recognise the woman?"

"Melanie Jane Bush," the two eleventh Doctors said, a sense of pride in their voices at the name.

"She was my companion when I stopped the Valeyard at my trial, and was with me when I regenerated for the sixth time," the Doctor explained, before looking at the screen with a new sense of contemplation. "But that still doesn't completely explain why she's with the _Valeyard_ now…"

"Or why she seems to be talking to him if he's as bad as you imply," Susan put in.

"They are?" the female Doctor asked, looking at the screen again before she nodded. "Oh yes, their lips _are_ moving…"

"Is there any way we can hear what's going on in there?" Amy asked. "I mean, obviously just going straight into the TARDIS belonging to your evil future self would be a very stupid move, but maybe if we can listen in on what they're saying to each other…"

"Simple enough, so long as I'm careful not to make it two-way," the Doctor nodded, turning back to study the console, making a few adjustments before he redirected his gaze to the screen.

" _I've positioned my TARDIS- all that she is now, just this console room- on the perfect axis_ ," the Valeyard said, his voice sounding almost resigned to his fate in contrast to the arrogance he'd always demonstrated in his past encounters with the Doctor. " _Here, I'm safe. Here, so long as we keep quite, quite still, the universe can continue to exist - rebuild itself, recover from the damage I've done. You know, I wanted to go back just one more time. Yes...I wanted to try to put it right...just one more time_ …"

" _Do you think it would have done any good_?" Mel asked.

" _I don't know_!" the Valeyard replied, a new sense of pleading in his voice as though he still wanted to justify himself. " _I shall never know. I was too scared, you see- too scared to try again_."

"Interesting…" the Doctor nodded thoughtfully at that statement; the Valeyard was already demonstrating a sense of humility that he'd never possessed in their past encounters back in his universe…

_Granted, he seems to be implying he's the reason the universe ended up in this state, but at least he's acknowledging he did it rather than ranting about how he deserves existence…_

" _So how long is the universe going to take to recover_?" Mel asked.

" _I don't know_!" the Valeyard responded. " _Millions of centuries, possibly never_!"

" _But how long have you been here_?"

" _I don't know! Millions of centuries, possibly forever_!"

"Ah," the author said, exchanging an anxious glance with Susan. " _That_ sounds worrying…"

" _What happens now_?" Mel asked.

" _Nothing_."

" _Nothing_?" Mel's words were echoed by Amy, Natalie and Rose, even as the Doctors and Susan looked at the Valeyard with a mixture of sorrow and loathing at the man who had done so much damage to time.

" _I mustn't move a muscle_ ," the Valeyard said, sounding genuinely scared at just the idea of moving. " _Just talking to you may have destroyed billions of systems! I don't know! I don't...I don't_ -…"

" _And me_?" Mel asked, a new sense of apprehension in her voice. " _What happens to me_?"

" _You've been here for ten years already, Mel_ ," the Valeyard said. " _Ever since you first saw me in the TARDIS, when I...when I...allowed Ellie to die_."

" _When you killed her, you mean_ ," Mel countered, her tone harsh even if her expression remained worrying fixed; the Doctor was becoming ever more worried about what had happened to Mel here (he supposed the Valeyard also deserved some pity, but considering what he was the Doctor had little sympathy for his dark counterpart).

" _Yes_ …" the Valeyard said. " _You_ _never left, you see. You've been here ever since, living as part of the illusion. The time ring the Coordinator gave you homed in on me immediately. You've been standing right there, held in stasis by my TARDIS for ten years_."

"Oh God," Amy looked over at the Doctor. "Is… could that happen?"

"Maybe…" the Doctor nodded, looking at the screen with new apprehension.

 _If Mel and the Valeyard have been stuck here for ten years and they're only just now reduced to_ this… _what did he do to the old girl to put her in this state?_

" _But you have_!" the Valeyard cut off Mel's denial. " _And_ _you will have to stay here for eternity with me. You can't move. The TARDIS has enabled us to move our mouths just enough to talk, but soon it'll need to steal that away from us_."

" _The TARDIS's power can't last for eternity as well...can it_?" Mel asked apprehensively.

" _It has power as long as I live_ ," the Valeyard responded. " _We are intertwined; have been since the day Susan and I fled Gallifrey_."

" _But if it's keeping you alive, and you're keeping it alive_ …"

"… _and in a way, we're both keeping you alive…_ "

"… _then there's no way out_."

" _A Mobius loop, Mel_ ," the Valeyard said solemnly. " _Our existences all intertwined, forever and ever_."

" _That's monstrous_!" Mel protested. " _I mean, I want to live… to walk… to eat… to breathe…_ "

" _So did I, once_ ," the Valeyard responded. " _That was my first mistake_."

The Doctor made a mental note to assure Mel that there was no similarity in these situations; the Valeyard had done all this to take a life that wasn't his, but Mel just wanted to get back the life she'd had.

" _But you mean… this is it_?" Mel said. " _We're trapped here together for good_?"

" _The Doctor… albeit not quite the Doctor… and his loyal companion… forever_ ," the Valeyard said

" _But… but I want to go back_ …" Mel said, voice trembling. " _Go home… be free_ …"

" _Oh Mel_ ," the Valeyard said. " _I'm sorry. I'm so very… very… sorry_."

It was a simple sentence, but that moment of regret was more than the Doctor had ever expected to hear from the Valeyard.

"Oh no…" Susan looked anxiously at the Doctors. "Can we… help her?"

"We have to try, anyway," the Doctor said as he moved back to the TARDIS console. "I was in a bad place and let Mel down a great deal when we parted company back home; this might be an alternate Mel, but if I can help her, I will."

"Can we get them out?" the female Doctor asked.

"We can get in there, at the very least," the author said as he joined his oldest self. "Once we have made contact with the Valeyard and Miss Bush, we can establish what happened to make this reality diverge from the realities we are familiar with and act accordingly."

"And how do we do that?" Amy asked.

"We materialise _inside_ that TARDIS and sync them up so that our ships are sharing energy with the other one," the newly-regenerated Doctor explained. "That should give that other TARDIS enough power so that we won't end up trapped in that ship with them, at least until we can work out what's going on here."

"And then?" Natalie asked.

"That depends on what the Valeyard has to tell us about how reality ended up in this state," the Doctor said, tone grim as he turned back to the console. "Let's go."

Without any verbal discussion, the Doctors and Susan fell into sync with each other, taking up position about the console and making rapid adjustments to the settings. After a few moments of anxious adjustments, the familiar sound of materialisation filled the console room, albeit far more drawn out than it usually was, until it came to a conclusion with a thud that somehow seemed more solemn than the usual noise. After exchanging apprehensive glances with his other selves, the Doctor led the way to the doors and opened them, looking around the outside console room in satisfaction at the sight of the two figures within it moving once again.

"Hello, Mel," the Doctor smiled warmly at the red-headed woman who was looking at him in confusion.

"Who…?" Mel began, even as a cautious smile spread across her face. "Doctor?"

" _Susan_?" the Valeyard cut in, staring incredulously at the woman in question as she walked out of the TARDIS after her various alternate grandfathers, moving to press himself against a corner of the room.

"Hello," Susan said, a bitter edge to her voice as she looked at the man who was an aspect of her grandfather.

"I… I never…" the Valeyard said, voice trailing off as he focused his gaze on the Doctor, occasionally shifting his arms as though he couldn't believe he could move them again. "And you… you are… but how…?"

"Alternates," the white-haired Doctor put in, indicating the other Doctors. "The four of us and this young woman are all counterparts of the Doctor you are familiar with."

" _You're_ the Doctor?" Mel looked at the female Doctor in surprise.

"That's me," the woman nodded at Mel. "Good to meet you, Melanie Bush."

"But… but _how_?" Mel asked, looking between the five of them for a moment before her gaze settled on the Doctor in the bow tie. "I mean, I understand parallel universes, so you're not all… well, _my_ Doctor… but if-"

"When reality starts collapsing like this, it attracts notice from other corners, and we found ourselves in a position to stop it," the Doctor shrugged, before his gaze focused on the Valeyard. "What I want to know is how you caused all this? Whatever else I thought of you, you never struck me as omnicidal; you wanted the freedom to get out there and mould the universe in your image, so when did you start destroying it?"

"It was… an accident."

"An accident?" Amy repeated incredulously. "How do you _accidentally_ destroy the universe?"

"I unintentionally Time-Rammed the TARDIS of our fourth incarnation while he was travelling to Logopolis."

"Ah," the Doctors all nodded in new understanding.

"Time Ram?" Natalie asked.

"When two TARDISes materialise in the exact same time and place and end up destroying themselves," the white-haired Doctor explained before he turned back to the Valeyard. "Let me guess, you believed that you could nudge your other self out of the way so that he wouldn't complete that particular trip and then you'd have the time to get the Logopolitans to help you with something?"

"I… I sought to harness the power of the Doomsday Machine," the Valeyard admitted.

"The Doomsday Machine?" Natalie looked sharply at the Valeyard. "As in the one on Uxareius?"

"You know about that?" the Valeyard looked curiously at the young blonde.

"We found a temporal rift there a while back and- that's not important right now," Natalie glared at the man she refused to acknowledge as an aspect of her father. "You're telling us that you wanted to _use_ that thing?"

"I thought that I could persuade the people of Logopolis to modify the internal structure of my TARDIS so that I could take it with me… and I accidentally destroyed them and myself," the Valeyard explained, shame on his face as he addressed the crowd around him.

"I- you _accidentally_ killed yourself while destroying a planet?" Rose stared incredulously at the Valeyard. "How?"

"I unintentionally triggered a Time Ram when I materialised too close to the Fourth Doctor's TARDIS while trying to divert his trip to Logopolis with the Master, and the subsequent explosion destroyed Logopolis in the process," the Valeyard explained. "Then I attempted to use the weapon to destroy Logopolis before I could visit it that time and ended up destroying it on my first visit, then I sought to ensure that I would not be inclined to go there for a holiday-"

"And everything snowballed from there, mmm?" the author looked critically at the Valeyard.

"It all seemed so simple at first," the Valeyard said, a bitter edge to his reflective tone. "I attempted to make another change to stop that first mistake, then I made things worse when I tried to find a point where I could alter my history in a more subtle manner, and then I ended up twisting time so far back on itself that it just… I couldn't do anything!"

"Which is one of the main reasons that we never allow ourselves to _do_ that kind of thing," the female Doctor looked firmly at the Valeyard. "The Time Lords may have accused me of meddling, but I always acted to maintain what I knew of history; I never stepped in just to make things 'better' because I thought I knew best."

"Didn't the Time Lords do something about this?" the white-haired Doctor asked curiously.

"Not in time," Mel observed with a bitter glare at the man in black. "Vansell and the President showed me a clip of what he got up to after the trial, and he kept on talking about twisting history around for nothing more than his own amusement; he left a spaceship to die because he didn't think of a way to stop the attackers earlier, he destroyed the Daleks at their beginning and woke up the Silurians early just because he _could_ , and then he even blew up Kasterborous!"

" _WHAT_?" the assembled Time Lords yelled in outrage at the Valeyard.

"I had intended to put things back later if it went wrong-"

"And of _course_ it was going to go wrong; we have to have limits or we're just going to cause… well, _this_!" the newly-regenerated Doctor glared at the Valeyard. "By Rassilon's beard, I was willing to _kill_ to further my own agenda a couple of bodies back and I still recognised that I couldn't just change history on a whim; what were you _thinking_?"

"He wasn't," the Doctor stared coolly at the Valeyard. "In the end, you're really not that old, are you?"

"What-?"

"You're like a child, when you get down to it," Susan observed, her own expression cold as she studied the man who had once been part of her grandfather. "You have no impulse control, no true awareness of your limits; you just did everything you could and told yourself you were being 'better' than Grandfather because you wouldn't hold back, correct?"

"It all seemed so simple at first…" the Valeyard conceded, his head bowed as though in acknowledgement of how foolish his defence sounded.

"But that's the point," Mel observed, looking at the Valeyard with a solemn expression. "Being the Doctor _isn't_ simple; he does what he does because it's right, but he has to draw the line or he's no better than his enemies."

"And then we just end up destroying everything we're trying to protect," the newly-regenerated Doctor put in. "I mean, look at yourself; you tried to do everything you wanted and you ended up breaking it all before you'd really had a chance to enjoy yourself."

"I know that now," the Valeyard conceded grimly. "I told myself that I gave the universe the firm hand it needed… but in the end, I achieved nothing but my own destruction, whereas you all enjoyed your travels even while accepting the responsibility of being the Doctor…"

"So," the Doctor looked at the Valeyard with a slight smirk, "keeping in mind that your methods created this mess, are you willing to try one last paradox to put things right?"

"But I can't-!"

"Because you're scared," the female Doctor cut him off, crouching down beside their dark counterpart to take his hand with a tentative smile. "We've all been there, Valeyard, but if we let fear stop us… well, we'd never have left Gallifrey in the first place."

"And even I only didn't take that option because of Quences," the author added.

"You… never left?" the Valeyard looked at the old-looking man in surprise.

"Until recently, anyway," the author shrugged.

"And it's not relevant to our discussion; we need to find a solution before everything gets any worse, and this is our best shot," the Doctor affirmed as he looked at the Valeyard. "I know that it's a risk, but you've always said you were better than me; do you really want to turn down this particular chance to prove it?"

"I abandoned that particular dream a long time ago, Doctor," the Valeyard solemnly shook his head. "I spent a lifetime rejecting what I perceived as your weakness, but now I realise… it takes true courage to recognise when _not_ to do something, rather than taking the easy solution merely because you can…"

"Then help us now," the author looked solemnly at his alternate self. "Let us trace what happened to your timeline, so that we can eliminate the divergent moment and prevent any of the problems you caused from coming to pass in the first place."

"In other words, you wish me to sacrifice my existence for the sake of the universe."

"It's what the Doctor would do," Amy observed.

"Affirmative," K9 put in. "This unit once witnessed the Doctor-Master willing to depart from the universe in order to protect one time period from a dangerous entity when he believed he would not be able to return; he would certainly be willing to make such a sacrifice."

"…Very well," the Valeyard put in.

"Hold on; you mean that you can actually do that?" Mel looked at the Doctors in surprise. "Just… trace back along his timeline like that?"

"Under normal circumstances, not really," the newly-regenerated Doctor explained as he and his other selves sat down around the Valeyard. "But with the Valeyard's actions having turned him into a particularly potent living paradox, and with time here in such a mess anyway… add in the fact that the moment we're looking for is the moment when _everything_ here started to go wrong, and it's at least worth a shot."

"'Worth a shot'?" the Valeyard looked at his other self with a slightly bitter smile.

"In these circumstances, you're hardly in a position to complain about us taking leaps of faith," the Doctor pointed out, settling into position behind the Valeyard and raising his hands to either side of the Valeyard's head. "Now then, we're going to have to dig a bit deeper than usual, and I appreciate that my predecessor was better at this than I am, but the sooner it's over, the sooner this is all sorted. Ready?"

"Contact," the other four Doctors said simultaneously.

"…Contact," the Valeyard whispered, the Doctor mouthing the words with him as six pairs of eyes closed. For a moment, the five Doctors simply watched as the Valeyard's memories washed over them, trying to restrain their disgust as he salvaged so many weapons and killed so many people, all the while bragging about how 'strong' he was compared to the man he had been before even after he made his crucial mistakes, until the truth became mixed up with his illusionary recollections of activities he had only carried out in the false realities generated by the TARDIS. Even when the Doctors knew some of these couldn't be real, it was hard to watch as the man who had once been him made so many mistakes, ignoring everything he'd once stood for while thinking of nothing more than his own satisfaction…

Finally, the telepathic connection seemed to split into two different perspectives, prompting the other Doctors to slow their mental probe to assess the situation they were watching. Watching the scene unfold in front of them, the Doctor almost smiled as he saw his sixth incarnation run from the Fantasy Factor; that body had always found it difficult to properly connect with other people, but he'd gone through some of the most significant emotional development of any incarnation without the obvious 'catalyst' of regeneration, and made the right impression on those who mattered most. The confrontation with the Valeyard had been a tense moment that had pushed them to their limit even before the Valeyard's true nature was revealed, and the other man had certainly earned no favours once they knew what he was after…

_Go back…_

"What was that?" the author said, 'speaking' for all of them as the five Doctors watched these events, invisible ghosts in the Doctor and the Valeyard's shared memory.

"No idea," the white-haired Doctor said, as the Sixth Doctor turned back towards the factory with a thoughtful expression. "But it seems like it's made an impression on him."

"Which we can't let happen," the female Doctor reminded the others, her gaze focusing on the memory/vision of the man in the multi-coloured coat. "He has to get away, remember? Run, Doctor, _run_ …"

Following her cue, the four male Doctors began to repeat the mantra, all their concentration focused on their past self as he hesitated, natural compassion at war with his own knowledge of the scale of what he would face if he went back…

Finally, just as the Doctors were starting to worry, the Sixth turned around and resumed his race for the doorway out of the Matrix, leaving the Fantasy Factory to explode with the Valeyard still inside it. There was a brief sense of regret in the other man's expression as he headed for the Seventh Door, clearly not entirely comfortable with his decision, but it was better to have a moment of discomfort now than risk the consequences of that moment of compassion in the long term.

"Done," the Doctor said, standing back up as the telepathic connection came to an end and the six were all back in the TARDIS.

"Done?" Mel looked at him with a curious, hopeful smile. "Do you mean-?"

"The Sixth Doctor has been prevented from saving me," the Valeyard said, looking unusually satisfied for someone who was about to be erased from history as he leant against the wall. "And with that act gone, my life since that moment, and all the actions that I have committed since that time… they no longer exist."

"You use a paradox to prevent the other paradoxes?" Amy asked in surprise. "Should we… I mean, can time… work like that?"

"We wouldn't normally take the risk, Miss Pond, but when this universe is in this kind of state, extreme circumstances are required to solve the problem and we could scarcely make things worse," the newly-regenerated Doctor shrugged. "Add in the benefit that reality was never meant to become this twisted and-"

A sudden shudder shook the TARDIS.

"What was-?" Natalie began.

"Reality's restructuring itself to accommodate the loss of the Valeyard's influence," the white-haired Doctor explained briskly as he and the other alternate Doctors began to move towards the other TARDIS inside this one. "We have to get out of here before the restructured reality barriers make it harder for us to get home-"

" _Wait_!" the Valeyard yelled, looking anxiously at his other selves. "Take Mel with you."

"With them?" Mel looked sharply at the Valeyard. "But if reality's being restored-"

"To the state it was in before the Doctor attempted to save me," the Valeyard cut her off. "My own existence is forfeit no matter what happens now, and any attempt to save myself risks compromising what we have done, but if _you_ are removed from this universe before the reset completes itself, you will remain even as your original self continues her existence."

"Orig- you mean from before you killed the Doctor?" Mel asked, eyes widening in understanding. "You mean… this will never have happened?"

"In a nutshell," the white-haired Doctor affirmed. "And with that in mind, hate to repeat myself, but we should probably get out of here before we _all_ get caught in the collapse."

"Wait!" the Valeyard said, reaching out to grab the female Doctor's right arm and the newly-regenerated Doctor's left arm with his own. For a moment the other two Doctors looked at the Valeyard in confusion, but that swiftly changed to incredulity as they saw golden energy flow from the Valeyard's arms into their own.

"Excess regeneration energy," the Valeyard explained, smiling briefly at the other two Doctors. "I have a surplus of it even before all this started that I am hardly going to use any more, and from what I saw of your lives… well, an extra regeneration or two could be useful."

"Extra?" the two Doctors said.

"Debate that later; _go_!" the Doctor yelled, practically shoving his other selves towards the TARDIS before he gave the Valeyard one last look. "For what it's worth… I've seen my darkness made manifest in other forms, and you weren't as bad as you could have been."

"I will accept that in the sentiment with which it was given," the Valeyard smiled weakly at the Doctor. "I was wrong, Doctor; I am not your ruthless strength… just your weak desires."

"But you made the right call in the end," the Doctor smiled tentatively at the Valeyard before fixing him with a firmer glare. "When it's us or everything, the Doctor will always pick everything; you just spent a bit more time making it all about you before you realised that."

"Goodbye, Doctor," the Valeyard nodded at his counterpart as he leant against the wall of his small console room, a resigned expression on his face as he closed his eyes.

"Goodbye," the Doctor replied before he returned to his own ship. With the Valeyard the only one left outside, the Doctor set the ship in motion and dematerialised, watching as the image on the screen shifted from the Valeyard's console room to the wider image of the Time Vortex, the small white box that was all that remained of the Valeyard's TARDIS fading away as the patches and distortion of the damaged vortex began to repair themselves.

"So… is that it?" Amy looked uncertainly at the Doctors. "I mean, did we solve it?"

"It may take a little time for the Vortex to stabilise completely, but there's no reason to believe the reality collapse that originally drew our attention here will continue," the female Doctor observed. "We dealt with the catalysing event, and all that's left now is for everything to put itself back together."

"And the danger's over?" Natalie asked.

"It's over," the Doctor smiled at his daughter. "Existence is safe once again."

 _And all it took was resorting to the Faction's measures_ …

It was one situation in utterly exceptional circumstances where all five of him had agreed that there was no other choice, but a part of him had to wonder if that was what this had all been in aid of…


	52. Parting with the Alternates

"So," Mel looked uncertainly around the console room, taking in all five Doctors as she spoke, "I get that I'm probably not going to _like_ the answer to this, and if it comes across as self-centred I'm sorry, but if reality's reset back to what it was before the Valeyard… before he _did_ anything… what does that mean for me?"

"In a nutshell," the Doctor said, looking sympathetically at Mel, "your universe has been merged back into mine."

"Yours?" Mel looked at him in confusion.

"Ours?" Amy raised an inquiring hand.

"Hold on, her world… _merged_ with ours?" Natalie looked curiously at her father. "How did that happen?"

"Long story short, creating parallel universes isn't as simple as some of your scientists and authors think," the author put in with a slight smile. "After all, most of the time the choices we make don't matter that much; does it make a difference to your life and the lives of those around you if you painted a room green or blue, that you chose the ham sandwich over the cheese, that you chose to take this route or that route to work today?"

"I take it in that scenario both routes take the same time?" Amy raised a hand for clarification.

"Precisely," the author nodded. "In any case, in those scenarios there might be a brief divergence as reality shifts to reflect the change, but with most such small changes the divergent reality will eventually come back to the local one, or exist so close to each other that it makes no difference to those who may notice such a difference."

"But in this case," the newly-regenerated Doctor explained, "since the Valeyard's reality _only_ diverged from the one that our colleague here came from because of the moment when our sixth self chose to go back for him, when we erased that moment from history we erased that particular branch from existence and it merged back into its point of origin, which would appear to be the universe that gave us this fine fellow."

"Oh," Mel said, looking at the screen for a moment as the vortex continued to repair itself, before she turned back to the Doctors. "So after all that… we just _undid_ everything the Valeyard did to existence? He destroyed reality, and now it never even happened?"

"This timeline is going to need some time to fully knit itself back into my reality, but this kind of thing has probably happened more often than we know, albeit not on the same scale," the Doctor observed with a slight smile. "I've had a few surprisingly close calls that have left me wondering if something else just happened that I don't know about that stopped a bigger problem from unfolding…"

"Should we feel sorry for him?"

"What?" the newly-regenerated Doctor looked at their female counterpart in surprise.

"The Valeyard," the female Doctor explained. "I mean, I'm not going to ignore the fact that he destroyed the universe because he didn't think about the consequences beyond keeping himself amused, but on the other hand, he _did_ end up saving it…"

"From what we observed, the Time Lords gave him an inch because they probably thought he'd be more willing to do their dirty work than I was, and he took a mile and claimed all those doomsday weapons we found in our travels before they realised how deranged he really was," the Doctor observed grimly. "I'll concede that he did the right thing in the end, but if he'd had the patience and common sense he should have been created with, he'd never have left us in that situation in the first place."

"Good point," the female Doctor acknowledged.

"So… not meaning to sound self-centred, but what does that mean for me?" Mel asked uncertainly. "I mean, if we erased the timeline that created _me_ … will I just cease to exist?"

"No, no, my dear," the author smiled at her. "From what we overheard, and as the Valeyard's own words seemed to confirm, you have spent some time in the Valeyard's TARDIS; having spent so long in the Time Vortex will have given you sufficient excess artron energy to survive the erasure of your home reality."

"Oh," Mel observed, looking silently at the scanner that still displayed the recovering vortex. "So… I can't go home?"

"Not as such," the newly regenerated Doctor observed. "I mean, you _could_ go back to Pease Pottage, but the… other you would probably go back there eventually-"

"I get that," Mel cut him off, before she sighed and turned to look at the assembled Doctors. "So… what happens to me now?"

"You could come with me," the white-haired Doctor put in.

"You?" the other Doctors looked at him in surprise.

"You… want me to join you?" Mel looked at the unfamiliar Doctor in surprise.

"Well, Alistair just left me to help a civilisation rebuild, and I… well, I could use a friend who has some idea of how I do things," the white-haired Doctor shrugged awkwardly. "From what I understand, my world diverged from the history you're aware of a good decade or so before this young woman's home time, so the risk of homesickness or temptation would be limited without putting her in a completely unfamiliar place, and based on what you've mentioned about her experience with my counterpart, I think I could use whatever insights she has to offer about what I might have missed out on."

"That… that sounds… thank you," Mel said at last, smiling gratefully at the Doctor.

"And on the topic of going home," the female Doctor spoke up, "I appreciate that I didn't do much in my own right, but you _will_ all be willing to send a few positive messages about my role here to the High Council back in my universe? They were about to sentence me to death before I was called in help with this mess-"

"No problem," Susan nodded reassuringly at her grandfather's female alternate. "I can guarantee a letter of recommendation from a former President of an alternate Gallifrey that will affirm my full satisfaction with your role here."

"Best we provide you with a suitable alias in the process, my child; we don't wish to create the risk of them assuming a biased source," the author put in, even as he smiled warmly at his granddaughter.

"Right," the white-haired Doctor observed with a smile. "So, that's our immediate problems dealt with-"

"Except for the fact that I've spent the last two decades being an absolute ass who basically lied to a woman who was meant to be my daughter and burnt essentially every bridge I had left in my universe," the newly-regenerated Doctor observed grimly.

"You know, self-pity isn't exactly an appealing character trait-" Amy observed.

"I just regenerated _twice_ in the last hour or so; I'm not really in the best state-!"

"Which is why I'll be staying with you," Rose put in.

"What?" the Doctor, Amy and Natalie looked at Rose in surprise.

"You're- you want to _stay_ with him?" Amy looked at the other girl in surprise.

"Why not?" Rose shrugged. "He needs help, and I'm lookin' for somethin' to do with my life these days."

"But your mother-?" the Doctor began.

"Mum's dead."

" _Dead_?" Amy repeated, looking at Rose with new understanding.

"It was just a stupid traffic accident last week… back in our old reality, anyway," Rose shrugged awkwardly as the rest of the group looked sympathetically at the young blonde. "I'd pretty much sorted out the funeral easily enough, but I was gonna lose the flat, I'd lost all my other relatives anyway, an' I didn't have anywhere else I really _wanted_ to stay…"

"And then the Faction came?" Amy finished, nodding at the other young woman in new understanding.

"And made you the offer that sent you back to 1987?" Natalie finished, staring intently at the shame-faced young girl.

"I just thought… maybe if Dad had never died, maybe he could have… or at least, Mum wouldn't get hit…" Rose shrugged helplessly. "Stupid, right?"

"No more stupid than anyone else who wished they could get back someone they loved," the author solemnly observed as he nodded at Rose, the other Doctors all giving her the same sympathetic smiles.

"It's not… perfect, I grant you, but… well, if he forgave you, I suppose I can do the same," the newly-regenerated Doctor observed.

"Thanks," Rose nodded tentatively at him. "I mean, I get that we only just met, but there's nothin' left for me back on _my_ Earth, and I was stuck in a rut work-wise, so… well, if you need a friend here…"

"I'd… I think I'd like that," the shaggy-haired Doctor smiled at Rose. "I mean, if you don't mind-"

"We both screwed up," Rose replied with a self-deprecating smile. "Maybe we can help each other be better now."

It was an impulsive decision, but in the end the Doctor couldn't condemn Rose for it; as she had observed, she and his other self had each made significant mistakes, and both of them could be just what the other needed to find a new place to belong now.

"Well," he stepped back and smiled at his other four selves, "I think we can safely say this all worked out well; the reality collapse has been averted, and hopefully we've all come away with a bit of a better understanding of what we need to be as the Doctor."

"What we need to be?" the author looked at the Doctor in surprise.

"No… he's right," the female Doctor conceded. "I won't speak for the rest of you, but I will concede that I made a few bad decisions recently; maybe this was the kick we needed to confirm what we should do instead."

"Even if that means exile?" the white-haired Doctor looked at his female counterpart.

"If he can handle it, I'm sure I can crack it," the female Doctor mused. "Besides, I've got that new regeneration now-"

"Just don't feel the need to use it too soon," the Doctor cut his other self off.

"Really?" the female Doctor looked at him in surprise. "Even when-"

"What they feel about your current physical appearance is nobody's business but yours," the Doctor said. "If you'd prefer to change, go ahead, but don't feel the need to do something you don't want to just because other people don't like what you are now."

"I'll… consider that," the female Doctor conceded with a tentative smile.

"And as for you," the Doctor looked over at the shaggy-haired Doctor with a smile, "don't waste the new opportunities the Valeyard gave you."

" _Waste_?" the woman and the newly-regenerated Doctor repeated with exaggerated indignation.

"You weren't exactly living up to your full potential, were you?" the Doctor observed with a brief smile at the two Doctors. "At least this way you have a chance to be better."

"Even me?" the shaggy-haired Doctor asked. "I did lose my chance to save Gallifrey-"

"There's never only one way to do something," the Doctor observed. "I'm not saying I _know_ of another way to do it, but don't give up just because the obvious solution isn't an option any more."

From what he'd seen of his other self's memories during their mental link, the Faction had at least been lost with Gallifrey's destruction in his reality, so that gave the other Doctor at least better opportunities to find alternative ways to bring his people back, even if the Doctor had to worry about the Faction stepping in if he tried to do anything about that back home.

With that solemn observation, the Doctors exchanged their final nods and returned to their TARDISes, the author and Susan taking a moment to disconnect the probability generator before they entered their own ship. Mel and Rose hesitated for a moment before they followed their 'new' Doctors into their respective TARDISes, leaving the female Doctor to look apprehensively at her TARDIS for a moment before she nodded in resolution and stepped inside it.

"Right then," the Doctor said, activating the TARDIS's radio as he took up position at the console. "Transmit all necessary supportive messages after our female counterpart, then we all take off and head back to our universes… and may I say, just before we part, that it's been a pleasure working with you all?"

The Doctor would acknowledge that he was always a difficult person to get along with, but at least this time around he had met some interesting alternates who had shown a willingness to overcome their worst traits and past mistakes… even if he had some suspicions about how these particular alternates had come into being…

As the other four TARDISes transmitted a positive response, the Doctor tapped a few switches on the console room before he pulled the dematerialisation lever. For a moment, the four other TARDISes seemed to be experiencing a drawn out dematerialisation within the Doctor's own ship, until the moment passed and Amy and Natalie had to grab the console as the other four police boxes suddenly vanished and the TARDIS seemed to accelerate into action.

"We're off!" the Doctor grinned at his companions. "We're going home…"

Then his gaze shifted to a small screen on the console and his gaze narrowed in confusion. " _That_ isn't good."

Amy didn't have time to ask what he was talking about when the TARDIS suddenly shuddered around them, as though it had just struck something…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has concluded, but only because I felt that the next storyline merited more than to just be part of this story, as the Doctor meets an old friend to face a truly twisted plan…


End file.
